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Role Recall: Helen Hunt on terrifying 'Twister' shoot, epic 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun' dance, and kissing up a storm in 'Cast Away'

“I’ve had many comebacks,” Helen Hunt says of her 40-plus-year career, which has been marked by trophies of all types (sans an MTV Movie Award, but more on that later), box-office hits, television triumphs… and the occasional break from the screen. After winning an Oscar in 1998 for As Good as It Gets, Hunt took time off to act on stage. She took another pause in the early 2000s before the birth of her daughter. And over the past decade, she has been more focused on directing than acting, which made her return to the Academy Awards in 2013 for The Sessions being lableled, well, a comeback.

“Hopefully this is another,” the 54-year-old says of The Miracle Season, an inspirational new sports drama based on the true story of a high school girls’ volleyball team that persevered after the tragic death of its top star. Hunt plays coach Kathy Bresnahan, who leads West High School in Iowa City, Iowa, on an odds-defying run.

Hunt claims she did “almost no mentoring” for her young castmates. But surely the squad can look at her career, which started around the time the Culver, Calif., native hit double digits, for goals. In our latest Role Recall interview (watch above), Hunt talked about starting off on Swiss Family Robinson, doubting that Mad About You would succeed, watching As Good as It Gets turn into an accidental romantic comedy, and more.

Swiss Family Robinson (1975-76) Before landing guest spots on Mary Tyler Moore (1977), The Bionic Woman (1978), and The Facts of Life (1980), the child actor’s first major gig came at age 12 on this TV movie turned series, where she played the Robinsons’ adopted daughter Helga Wagner. Hunt learned early how to separate her show-biz family from her real kin. “It’s hard as a kid, because then one day you don’t come back,” she said. “I’ve been directing some episodes of a family show lately [Life in Pieces] and look at these kids and feel really protective. ‘Cause it isn’t your family. It’s a place of work [for the older actors]. So I take special care when I work with young actors now.”

Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) Hunt played the footloose BFF to Sarah Jessica Parker in this definitely ’80s teen comedy. “We had a lot of fun together,” Hunt recalled. “A lot of it was about hair. I had hair that went straight up, I had hair clips that we made from scratch.” She remembers all of her dance moves … fondly: “I think they were pretty awesome. I mean, there’s no reason to go back and look. But let’s just assume that they were awesome.”

Mad About You (1992-99) The genesis of this beloved sitcom about married New Yorkers dates back to a dinner party where Hunt met co-creator (and future co-star) Paul Reiser while he was writing the series. Hunt initially balked at the offer. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to be in a sitcom playing someone’s wife, that’s just not what I want to do.’”

Reiser’s script won her over, but even after filming the pilot, the actress was skeptical of its long-term prospects. “I thought ‘This show’s never gonna go, it’s not about enough, it’s not [high concept] like a dad with seven kids. It was just these two people. And I thought, ‘This is gonna be good, but this is probably it. And then it wasn’t it.” Sure wasn’t. The series not only went, it went for seven seasons, earning Hunt four consecutive Emmys and the distinction (along with Reiser) of becoming the first actor paid $1 million per episode.

Twister (1996) The actress’s biggest box-office hit to date came with this disaster flick about a pair of storm chasers (Hunt and the late Bill Paxton) dodging flying cows and the like. It was not an easy shoot, especially given the number of practical effects employed by director Jan de Bont. “It was terrifying every day,” she said. “It was just at the beginning of everything being done on the computer, so it wasn’t done on the computer. Every day it was like, ‘What fresh hell is this? Oh. A hail machine. Fantastic.’” (See also Paxton’s recollection of an injury Hunt suffered while shooting the film’s cornfield sequence.)

As Good as It Gets (1997) Hunt won a Best Actress Oscar for her poignant turn as a single mother who has a chronically ill son and who falls for Jack Nicholson’s seemingly insufferable curmudgeon. The film, co-written and directed by James L. Brooks, is considered one of the great contemporary rom-coms, but that wasn’t initially the plan: “I don’t believe [Brooks] saw it as a romantic comedy until halfway through the movie, and the genius of this particular director is that he allowed the movie to speak to him,” Hunt said. “He literally called Jack and I in to watch dallies and said, ‘Look, it’s a romantic comedy.’ And we went, ‘OK.’”

Pay It Forward (2000) This is a classic example of a film you’d think would’ve been more successful, given the prominence of the phrase popularized by its title. But the drama, co-starring the now-disgraced Kevin Spacey and young Haley Joel Osment, fresh off The Sixth Sense, earned a modest $33 million — and subpar reviews. “I think a lot of people hated it,” she said. “But I hear the phrase a lot.”

What Women Want (2000) December 2000 was a very good month for Hunt at the box office, with What Women Want (her second biggest hit) and Cast Away (her third) opening on back-to-back weekends. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to do [What Women Want],” Hunt said of the Mel Gibson vehicle. “But Jim Brooks was friends with [co-writer and director] Nancy Meyers and said, ‘The possibility exists that you’ll be best friends.’”

As for the recent news that What Women Want is the latest film getting a gender-reversed remake (with Taraji P. Henson starring as a woman who hears men’s thoughts), Hunt has a great casting idea: “Who’s gonna play me? Can I play me? She falls in love with an older woman? Don’t blow it off!”

Cast Away (2000) Robert Zemeckis’s stranded island drama is best remembered for the one-man (plus volleyball) theatrics of Tom Hanks, but don’t forget about the main reason Chuck Noland wanted to get home: Hunt’s Kelly Frears. And wow did they have a wet reunion kiss. “There was a lot of rain, and a lot of kissing, that’s what I remember,” she said. “And maybe, unless I’m dreaming, an award for the kissing.” (Hunt and Hanks actually lost their bid for Best Kiss at the 2001 MTV Movie Awards, much to her newfound dismay.)

The Sessions (2012) Hunt earned her second Oscar nomination for this indie drama in which she played a married sex surrogate tending to a paralyzed poet (John Hawkes) intent on losing his virginity. “I didn’t know that would happen,” Hunt said of the acclaim for the Sundance premiere. “I knew it wasn’t going to be nothing, as I sat on the set without a stitch of clothing on, doing wildly intimate scenes that were not at all creepy. They were loving, and gentle, and the movie turned into something I’m as proud of as anything.”

The Miracle Season opens Friday. Watch Hunt talk about why it appealed to her as the mother of a 13-year-old girl:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

Role Recall: Jeff Goldblum on ‘The Fly’ makeup, why he unbuttoned in ‘Jurassic Park,’ and his Cate Blanchett crush

‘Talk about a memorable ride’: Catherine Zeta-Jones on her pregnant Oscar win 15 years later

Woody Harrelson really learned to dunk to win bet with Wesley Snipes on set of ‘White Men Can’t Jump’

#Mad About You #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #movie:what-women-want #movie:girls-just-want-to-have-fun #movie:as-good-as-it-gets #Swiss Family Robinson #_uuid:96d77ee1-19b7-3130-abe9-b21855473dd2 #video #Helen Hunt #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #movie:the-sessions #movie:cast-away #_author:Kevin Polowy #movie:twister #movie:pay-it-forward #News #Role Recall #movie:the-miracle-season #Interviews

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'Ready Player One': That huge [SPOILER] scene was almost set in 'Blade Runner'

Warning: Ready Player One spoilers ahead!

There was no way they were going to get everything. What Steven Spielberg and his Ready Player One team pulled off in scoring the rights that basket of Easter eggs was a gargantuan task. Understandably, there were certain intellectual property hurdles they couldn’t clear.

Included among the misses was Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner, which RP1 screenwriter Zak Penn told Yahoo Entertainment was at one point targeted to be the cinematic world that Parzival (Tye Sheridan) and friends enter for the second challenge in the OASIS. (The challenge ultimately became set inside The Shining instead, which worked out: It has been lauded as the film’s best sequence.)

“They went into Blade Runner at one point in the movie,” Penn said of the film’s early drafts (watch above). “There was a whole action scene set in Blade Runner.” The scene, according to Penn, included Rick Deckard’s car and gun, and the Voight-Kampff Test, used to determine if a subject is human or replicant.

Blade Runner, like Ready Player One, is a Warner Bros. property, so you’d think Spielberg would have an easier time securing the rights with corporate synergy at play. But RP1 was in production at the same time Warners was shooting 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 starring Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling, and the studio wasn’t keen on having the former film steal any of the latter’s retro thunder. (While Blade Runner is never referenced directly in RP1, there are still some sly nods to it.)

“But we ended up with something much better, I think, which is really probably my favorite sequence in the movie, ” said Penn, who was carefully instructed by Spielberg not to mention The Shining’s name during prerelease publicity rounds to avoid spoilers. “It was pretty exciting to get to go into that movie and use it.”

Of course, even though they were able to use elements of Stanley Kubrick’s chilling Stephen King adaptation, there was one element they weren’t able to secure: star Jack Nicholson‘s likeness, which, per Penn, involved a whole other layer of subrights clearances.

Ready Player One is now in theaters.

Watch Zak Penn discuss two of the film’s more surprising Easter eggs:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Ready Player One’: Your ultimate guide to all the pop-culture references

Is ‘Ready Player One’ the geekiest movie ever made? Steven Spielberg and cast weigh in.

The surprising movies Steven Spielberg asked his young ‘Ready Player One’ stars to watch

#movie:ready-player-one #Zak Penn #_author:Kevin Polowy #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #News #movie:blade-runner #_uuid:4b9ad505-e67d-3697-8f52-4c2383d44fe3 #_draft:true #movie:the-shining #video #Interviews #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

[kevinpolowy]

Helen Hunt admits she thought 'Mad About You' would bomb, now she's exploring reboot

Helen Hunt admits she had her reservations about playing PR specialist Jaime Buchman in Mad About You when future co-star and series co-creator Paul Reiser pitched it to her after the pair met at a dinner party.

“I thought, ‘I don’t want to be in a sitcom playing someone’s wife, that’s just not what I want to do,’” Hunt told Yahoo Entertainment this week (watch above) during our Role Recall interview while promoting her inspirational new drama, The Miracle Season. Then she looked at the script Reiser sent her “and I started paging through it and thought, ‘This is a really, really good part.’”

Hunt agreed to join Reiser, but remained skeptical that the series would find success when it launched in 1992. “When we did the pilot, I thought ‘This show’s never gonna go, it’s not about enough, it’s not [high concept] like a dad with seven kids,” Hunt said. “It was just these two people. And I thought, ‘This is gonna be good, but this is probably it. And then it wasn’t it.”

Not only did the show go, it went on for seven seasons, and earned Hunt four consecutive Emmy awards (not to mention historic $1 million-per-episode paychecks for both her and Reiser over the course of its final season in 1999).

Now, as other ’90s shows like Full House and Roseanne return to the airwaves, so could Mad About You. Reports first surfaced in December that Reiser and Hunt could return for a revival that would focus on the couple dealing with their pending status as empty nesters with their now-17-year-old heading off for college.

“It’s possible,” Hunt told us. “Paul and I feel really proud of the work we did, and we left it in the best way we knew how to do. And so I think any hesitation on both of our parts is that we don’t want to mess it up.

“But we’re talking about it.”

Look for our full “Role Recall” interview on Yahoo Entertainment soon.

The Miracle Season opens April 6. Watch the trailer:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

Where Did Helen Hunt Go? Behind the Camera

‘Role Recall’: Jeff Goldblum on ‘The Fly’ makeup, why he unbuttoned in ‘Jurassic Park,’ and his Cate Blanchett crush

‘Talk about a memorable ride’: Catherine Zeta-Jones on her pregnant Oscar win 15 years later

#Mad About You #_author:Kevin Polowy #_uuid:d1369f6f-e7ba-38a0-816f-8d52dae20d01 #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #News #_draft:true #paul reiser #video #Interviews #Helen Hunt #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

[kevinpolowy]

2 'Ready Player One' references you never saw coming

The heavy bulk of references in the Easter egg-filled Ready Player One fall into one of two categories: They’re from the 1980s (Back to the Future, Beetlejuice, Weird Science), and/or they’re genre fare (Alien, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica).

Two of the more surprising references, then, are callbacks to a pair of early 1990s comedies: 1993’s Arnold Schwarzenegger spoof Last Action Hero and the 1994 frat-house farce PCU. The common thread: Both of those movies were co-penned by Zak Penn, who adapted Ernest Cline’s best-selling novel Ready Player One for the screen.

“Ernie is a big fan of Last Action Hero, which is the first script I wrote [with Adam Leff],” Penn told Yahoo Entertainment (watch above). Cline suggested to Penn that they include to a nod to that film, but Penn resisted, noting that Spielberg limited the use of IP from his own filmography. “If Steven’s not referencing his movies, it seems kind of pathetic for me to reference mine.  But Ernie didn’t listen to me, and he went around my back to the production designer” at Industrial Light & Magic.”

When Penn first saw a rough cut of the movie, he realized Cline and company had slipped into one scene’s background a movie theater marquee that reads “Schwarzenegger [in] Jack Slater III,” a fictional sequel to that film’s fictional movie franchise. “I have to admit, I was pretty psyched when I saw it. Because I didn’t do it, and I didn’t feel responsible for it.”

The Last Action Hero reference slipped into Ready Player One (Photo: Warner Bros.)

Penn, whose other credits include the superhero films X2, The Incredible Hulk, and Avengers, did, however, intentionally plant a quotable from PCU, the second film he and Leff had produced.

In that comedy, multiyear senior Droz (Jeremy Piven) cautions the meathead Gutter (Jon Favreau) against wearing a band’s T-shirt to their concert, and tells him, “Don’t be that guy.”

In Ready Player One, Parzival (Tye Sheridan) is considering dressing his avatar as one of his favorite movie characters, Buckaroo Banzai, to go out to a zero-gravity dance club, when Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) don’t-be-that-guys him.

“People say that to me to sometimes, ‘Hey, don’t be that guy,’” Penn said. “I’ll say, ‘Hey. That’s my line.’”

Ready Player One is now in theaters.

Is Ready Player One the geekiest movie ever? Steven Spielberg and cast react:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

The surprising movies Steven Spielberg asked his young ‘Ready Player One’ stars to watch

How Steven Spielberg got his ‘Star Wars’ references in ‘Ready Player One’ after all

‘Ready Player One’ trailer drops more Easter eggs from the OASIS — did you catch them all?

#movie:ready-player-one #Zak Penn #_author:Kevin Polowy #movie:pcu #_uuid:41a6ec03-7d9f-35f7-af7c-f22e48184ca0 #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #News #video #movie:last-action-hero #ready player one #Interviews #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

[kevinpolowy]

The surprising movies Steven Spielberg asked his young 'Ready Player One' stars to watch

Ready Player One, the new Steven Spielberg-directed virtual-reality action film based on the bestselling book by Ernest Cline, is steeped in references to popular ’80s movies like Back to the Future, Beetlejuice, Dune, Say Anything, and Nightmare on Elm Street.

However, the film’s two leads, 21-year-old Tye Sheridan (Parzival) and 24-year-old Olivia Cooke (Art3mis), weren’t even born yet when those movies came out. We sat down with Spielberg and his Ready Player One stars and asked whether the Oscar-winning filmmaker put the actors through some sort of retro pop-culture boot camp. (Watch the interview above.)

As it turns out, Spielberg did make some movie recommendations — just not the ones you’d expect.

“Steven asked us to watch His Girl Friday,” Sheridan said of Howard Hawks’s 1940 screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. “Because there’s a scene in the movie where Art3mis and Parzival are trading [VR mastermind] Halliday knowledge and trying to one-up each other, and [Spielberg] said, ‘Go watch that movie because the dynamic between the male and the female leads in that movie is what I want you guys to look at.’”

Spielberg asked Philip Zhao to screen The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror masterpiece. That’s not surprising in that it relates to Ready Player One — in fact, the adaptation of the Stephen King novel plays a significant role in RP1. But it is surprising because The Shining is terrifying, and Zhao is barely into his teens.

“I have not finished my homework yet,” the high school freshman admitted. “I watched the trailer for it before I watched the movie ’cause it’s R-rated, and I saw the blood elevator scene and I already got a little spooked. And when I watched the [“Here’s Johnny” clip]. … No, I’m not watching the movie anymore.”

Ready Player One opens Friday.

Is Ready Player One the geekiest movie ever? Steven Spielberg and cast react:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

How Steven Spielberg got his ‘Star Wars’ references in ‘Ready Player One’ after all

‘Ready Player One’ trailer drops more Easter eggs from the OASIS — did you catch them all?

10 spooky real-life locations from 10 real spooky movies

#Philip Zhao #movie:ready-player-one #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #Steven Spielberg #_draft:true #video #movie:the-shining #movie:his-girl-friday #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews #Tye Sheridan #Olivia Cooke #Hannah John-Kamen #_uuid:979796dd-1744-35ca-ae3e-9cdd74b37b34 #_author:Kevin Polowy #ben mendelsohn #News #ready player one

[kevinpolowy]

Is 'Ready Player One' the geekiest movie ever made? Steven Spielberg and cast weigh in.

The hyperbole kicked into hyper-gear shortly after its premiere earlier this month at the SXSW Film Festival. “It’s perhaps the geekiest movie ever made,” one critic said of Ready Player One, the Steven Spielberg-directed spectacle set in a future where virtual reality is king and a nonstop bonanza of pop-culture references from retro movies, TV shows, and video games dominates the landscape.

And Spielberg, the legendary lenser behind films like Jaws, E.T., and Jurassic Park, welcomes the label. He was, after all, a geek long before geek culture dominated entertainment. “I have a lot of outer-geek, but the making of this film brought out my inner geek,” Spielberg told Yahoo Entertainment at the movie’s Los Angeles press day (watch above).

The 71-year-old first started making his own 8mm movies when he was 12 while growing up in Arizona, and by age 16 he had directed a 140-minute sci-fi adventure (that would later influence his 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

“I suffered through geekdom when nobody but me, I felt, was a geek,” Spielberg said, laughing. “So it was nice to be able to geek out with Ready Player One.”

As one of his stars, Lena Waithe (Master of None, The Chi), put it: “The geeks are the cool kids. The geeks are the ones that are making things happen,” she said. “Steve Jobs was a geek. That’s one of the coolest geeks in the world. And I think Steven is one of those geeks too, who spent many hours making movies and dreaming things up, and then gave us stuff like Jurassic Park.”

Ben Mendelsohn, no stranger to geekdom after his role in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and who is currently filming the superhero adventure Captain Marvel, took the emphatic early reactions to Ready Player One to the next level.

“I have no problem embracing the greatest geek movie of all time,” he said. “You heard it here first.”

Ready Player One opens Friday.

Watch Steven Spielberg tease the film’s Star Wars cameos:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Ready Player One’ trailer drops more Easter eggs from the OASIS — did you catch them all?

Steven Spielberg Crushes Carl’s Jr. ‘Spielburgers’ Plan

Steven Spielberg: Netflix Movies and Streaming Services ‘Deserve an Emmy, but Not an Oscar’

#Philip Zhao #movie:ready-player-one #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #Steven Spielberg #_draft:true #video #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_uuid:9dce50ae-ff09-3f36-9a92-566223ac0aba #_author:Kevin Polowy #ben mendelsohn #News #Lena Waithe #Interviews

[kevinpolowy]

Son of Stacker: John Boyega on taking 'Pacific Rim' reins from Idris Elba

Idris Elba famously canceled the apocalypse as Jaeger-meister Gen. Stacker Pentecost in the 2013 robot-monster clash Pacific Rim, but unfortunately didn’t survive the cancellation.

Inheriting the Earth-protecting reins in the new sequel, Pacific Rim Uprising, is his rebellious son Jake, played by Star Wars star John Boyega. The pair now share a series (never scenes), but the casting is a coup: Both are handsome black Brits with charisma to spare.

And Elba, Boyega told Yahoo Entertainment, is exactly what (who) got him interested in the series in the first place. “He was the one who brought me to Pacific Rim,” Boyega said (watch above). “Seeing him in the full Drivesuit, especially after seeing him in The Wire, was just a treat.”

Boyega, who is also a producer on the action film, said his fellow London native contacted him after it was announced he’d take on Son of Stacker. “He sent a nice message to me and my producing partner [Femi Oguns],” Boyega said. “Just wishing us congratulations and best of luck on the journey, which is nice to get.”

The 26-year-old best known for playing Finn in The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017) said he did spend time studying Elba’s performance in the first Rim film, but at the same time, Jake has a more rebellious edge than the stoic Stacker. Jake is trafficking in stolen parts at the onset of Uprising before he reluctantly joins the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.

“Jake is obviously molded up from his circumstances, and his circumstances are much different than Stacker’s,” he explained. “So Jake definitely has his own individual flair, but he is his father’s son.

“So there is that gravity that Idris has, that command. I wanted people to see that and be like, ‘That’s Stacker’s boy!’”

Pacific Rim Uprising opens Friday.

Watch Boyega answer some burning Star Wars questions:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ review: Sci-fi franchise gets ‘Transformers’-style makeover

Here’s John Boyega piloting in an epic Jaeger-on-Jaeger battle from ‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ (exclusive)

‘Pacific Rim Uprising’: John Boyega goes up against ginormous monsters, traitorous mech in new trailer

#_author_id:97e0bfc0-9e83-11e3-bfb8-cce40eaac22c #movie:pacific-rim #movie:pacific-rim-uprising #news #interviews #Idris Elba #John Boyega #Pacific Rim #_uuid:ca023513-660b-3e05-bcb4-25b587dd461f #_draft:true

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Behind the 'Jumanji' dance fight: How 'terrible dancer' Karen Gillan mastered her moves (exclusive)

Karen Gillan is a terrible dancer. The Scottish actress will be the first to admit it. “I’m not coordinated, so it’s just limbs everywhere,” the Scottish star explains in the making-of doc Surviving the Jungle: The Spectacular Stunts from the Blu-ray release of the holiday hit, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (watch exclusive look above).

So mastering “dance fighting,” one of the key strengths of her video game avatar character, Ruby Roundhouse, inevitably proved challenging for the Dr. Who and Guardians of the Galaxy star.

Gillan expressed her self-doubts to M. Hynes, the film’s stunt coordinator, who was dealing with his own set of challenges. “We’ve done dances and we’ve done fights, but we’ve never combined the two,” he says.

Hynes, however, was ultimately able to draw the best dancing and fighting out of Gillan. “We worked her into the fight, and she really embraced it,” he said. “She just pulled it off with flying colors.”

The sequence, which finds Roundhouse “unleashing holy terror” on two henchmen guarding a helicopter hangar, all set to Big Mountain’s 1994 cover of “Baby, I Love Your Way,” proves to be one of the best moments in Welcome to the Jungle, a sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams favorite.

“I feel like we created something quite specific and unique,” Gillan says. “It was this fun little dance routine, and then she just takes out these two guys. And it’s insane.”

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is now on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital HD.

Watch the trailer:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’: Exclusive look at The Rock & Co. as film’s video-game characters

Review: The laughs in ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ hang low

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ Switcheroo: Watch the cast swap the movie’s best lines

#_author_id:97e0bfc0-9e83-11e3-bfb8-cce40eaac22c #movie:jumanji-welcome-to-the-jungle #Jumanji #mags-noads #Karen Gillan #video #Exclusives #Clips #_uuid:3b2e1051-24d4-3a61-8bd3-95974cf9a298 #_draft:true

[kevinpolowy]

How Steven Spielberg got his 'Star Wars' references in 'Ready Player One' after all

Even Hollywood royalty like Steven Spielberg can misspeak on the PR circuit. Or was he just misunderstood?

On Thursday, the Oscar-winning director was participating in a press conference for his new nostalgia-soaked, Easter egg-filled sci-fi actioner Ready Player One when he reportedly declared, “We couldn’t get any Star Wars rights. … We [tried] very hard. They wouldn’t give up the rights.” Spielberg’s comments were then covered far and wide, including on Yahoo Entertainment.

By Friday, however, Spielberg was clearing up the narrative, telling us at the film’s Los Angeles press day that there are in fact Star Wars references in the screen adaptation of Ernest Cline’s bestselling book, and teasing a couple of them in the process.

“We requested [intellectual property] from almost all of the [movie] studios, and also game companies and toy companies, and everybody jumped on board, including Disney,” Spielberg said (watch above). Disney acquired Lucasfilm, originator of and gatekeeper to the Star Wars universe, in 2012.

The director was intent on only licensing characters and other IP from the original trilogy, however, which makes sense given the vast majority of Ready Player One’s countless Easter eggs originate from the ’80s and ’90s and include screen icons like King Kong, Jurassic Park’s T. rex, the Iron Giant, Freddy, Jason, and Chucky.

“I didn’t think it would be good to do the contemporary characters in all of the [new] Star Wars films, because our film takes place in 2045 but everybody has returned nostalgically to the 1980s,” he said. “Disney was very generous in letting us basically cherry-pick the little items we needed.”

While it’s virtually impossible to pick out every pop culture reference in a single viewing of Ready Player One, Spielberg teased what Star Wars fans can look out for, including sightings of R2-D2 and an X-wing starfighter.

“[They are] in the periphery of the painting,” he said.

Ready Player One opens March 29.

Watch the trailer:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

Olivia Cooke Discusses Her Whirlwind ‘Ready Player One’ Audition

Steven Spielberg Thanks Time’s Up For Creating A “Watershed Moment”

True story: Steven Spielberg still gets first-day filming jitters

#Star Wars #movie:ready-player-one #_author:Kevin Polowy #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #Steven Spielberg #News #video #_uuid:92983e42-4f9e-3f9f-8d35-11a83ed7f986 #Interviews #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

[kevinpolowy]

How Alicia Vikander put on 12 pounds of muscle for 'Tomb Raider' transformation

Alicia Vikander admits she’s always been “petite.” The Swedish Oscar winner (The Danish Girl) and former ballet dancer stands 5-foot-5 and has always had a featherweight frame.

But you wouldn’t want to cross her in Lara Croft mode.

Vikander, 29, added about 12 pounds of muscle to play the video-game-turned-action-movie heroine in the new reboot of Tomb Raider (a role previously played on the big screen by Angelina Jolie in 2001 and 2003).

“I lifted weights, probably for the first time in my life, to be able to put on that muscle,” Vikander told Yahoo Entertainment at the film’s Los Angeles press day (watch above). “And I had some really incredible women who I met who trained me in MMA [mixed martial arts] and boxing.”

In the origin story, Croft is a London bike messenger who trains in MMA — and refuses to acknowledge the death of her missing explorer father (Dominic West), which prevents the heiress from claiming his vast fortune. She ultimately finds a clue about his whereabouts, which sends her to a remote island off the coast of Japan, where her first Tomb Raid begins.

“I’m quite petite, so I put on 10 to 12 pounds because I wanted to honor the fact that in the story she’s this very feminine young woman, but she has physical strength, so it’s plausible for you to believe that she can do what she does when she’s thrown out on this adventure.”

Not to leave out co-star Walton Goggins (who plays Croft’s adversary, the malicious mercenary Mathias Vogel), we asked the Hateful Eight alum what his workout regimen entailed.

“We were at the gym two hours after Alicia got there,” he said. “And left two hours before she did.”

Tomb Raider opens Friday. Watch the trailer:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft: First ‘Tomb Raider’ Photos

Alicia Vikander talks ‘Happy and Content’ married life with Michael Fassbender

Alicia Vikander hasn’t seen her Oscar since she won it

#Tomb Raider #Alicia Vikander #_author:Kevin Polowy #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #News #_uuid:89c22b04-ca5b-3b65-9267-32bf3e82031c #_draft:true #Walton Goggins #video #movie:tomb-raider #Interviews #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

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Role Recall: Jeff Goldblum on 'The Fly' makeup, why he unbuttoned in 'Jurassic Park,' and his Cate Blanchett crush

Love for Jeff Goldblum has been in full ‘blum’ lately. The actor/jazzman/international treasure has been receiving the type of internet tributes in the past couple of years that is usually reserved for the likes of Bill Murray or Nicolas Cage. (Just see the EDM remix of his Jurassic Park laugh, or how many Jeff Goldblum shower curtains one can purchase online.)

And a resurgence in high-profile roles for the 65-year-old Pittsburgh native has coincided with it all. In 2016, Goldblum revived his role of the brilliant scientist David Levinson in Independence Day: Resurgence, and later this year, he’ll return to dinosaur-inhabited lands as the wisecracking Dr. Ian Malcolm in the sequel-to-reboot Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

In-between those sequels, though, came the clearest sign yet that Goldblum is back in the highest fashion: a gig in the Marvel tentpole Thor: Ragnarok, where the King of Eccentricity got to riff right and left as a candy-colored gladiator Gamemaker, appropriately called “the Grandmaster.”

In a new “Role Recall” interview with Yahoo Entertainment (see above), the infinitely enthusiastic screen icon talked us through his most beloved films, from ensemble bonding in his 1983 breakout The Big Chill to laughing it up (and unbuttoning that shirt) in 1993’s megahit Jurassic Park to beholding the power of Cate Blanchett in Thor: Ragnarok.

The Big Chill (1983) The Lawrence Kasdan-directed drama featured a powerhouse cast — including Glenn Close, William Hurt, and Kevin Kline — as college chums who reunite after one of their friends commits suicide. The victim was played by Kevin Costner in his film debut, but his flashback scene, which Goldblum described in detail, was famously cut from the finished work. “It was poetical, and metaphorical,” Goldblum said of the foreshadowing sequence, in which Alex (Costner) hesitates to carve a Thanksgiving turkey with a sharp knife.

Jeff Goldblum in ‘The Fly’ (Fox)

The Fly (1986) Goldblum spent five hours in a dentist’s chair getting transformed into a man/fly hybrid by eventual Best Makeup Oscar winners Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis in David Cronenberg’s horror remake. Still, as unsightly as the feature’s creature would be, the film turned Goldblum into something of a sex symbol, even if he’s reticent to acknowledge it. “I don’t who says that, but there you go,” he said. “I had my flowy locks at that point.” Though he will admit that once Seth Brundle’s DNA was mashed up with an insect’s, he’s given to “volatile storms” and “a fevered, unquenchable sexuality.”

Jurassic Park (1993) Dr. Ian Malcolm’s laugh (or “suggestive gurgle,” as Goldblum calls it), heard aboard a chopper with Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie (Laura Dern), came on one of the first days of shooting Steven Spielberg’s beloved dinosaur thriller. “We were on me, and it just occurred. … I don’t think it even said [he laughs] in the script.” (FYI, you can play Goldblum’s Jurassic laugh for 10 hours straight on YouTube if you’re so inclined.)

As for his most meme’d moment, Malcolm’s oddly timed chest-baring after breaking his leg during a T-Rex attack, Goldblum did his darnedest to justify it. “It’s supposed to be Costa Rica, right? So things are hot and I’m sure I’m in some sort of fever. So all the logic is that we gotta get some of these wet clothes off immediately,” he said. “As I remember, I don’t think anybody fought me on that.”

Jeff Goldblum in ‘Jurassic Park’ (Universal)

Independence Day (1996) After Jurassic, Goldblum scored the second-biggest hit of his career (before Thor) three years later, with Roland Emmerich’s alien invasion blockbuster. There was a moment that linked both films: As Capt. Steven Hiller (Will Smith) and Levinson make an escape on a space shuttle, the latter yells out “Must go faster!,” a line we originally heard Goldblum use in Jurassic Park (and which Emmerich had him re-do in post-production). “I hope that Mr. Steven Spielberg looked kindly upon that. We appropriated it only with the utmost affection,” he said. “It was an homage. That’s a French word, it means some kind of glazed donut, I believe.”

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) Goldblum has appeared in two films directed by the quirky auteur Wes Anderson, with a third (the animated Isle of Dogs) set to open next month. All three have co-starred Bill Murray. “I love him to pieces, and he’s an interesting treasure, and international treasure,” he said of the actor. Goldblum particularly enjoyed staying across the hall from Murray at a bed and breakfast in Görlitz, Germany, while filming Budapest. “That’s what Wes Anderson does, he sets up these event locations and beautiful casts where you have a spectacular, unforgettable experience.”

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Marvel’s “threequel” would be the second film to co-star Goldblum and Cate Blanchett after The Life Aquatic — but the pair didn’t get to share scenes in either of them. They did share one day on the set of the Taika Waititi-directed Ragnarok, so big-time Blanchett fan Goldblum made the most of it. “I was able to overlap her last day of shooting, and I came to the big soundstage and watched her, saw her again, and had moments of enchanting pleasantry — enchanting for me,” he said. “I watched her act. I think she’s magically spectacular.”

Watch Goldblum’s “Role Recall” segment on Thor: Ragnarok, now on DVD and Blu-ray:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

Watch Jeff Goldblum nail a game of ‘5 Degrees of Jeff Goldblum’

This epic Jeff Goldblum improv was cut from ‘Thor: Ragnarok,’ but now you can see it here (exclusive video)

‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ teaser promises more dinosaurs, more Jeff Goldblum

#_author_id:97e0bfc0-9e83-11e3-bfb8-cce40eaac22c #Role Recall #news #video #Interviews #Jeff Goldblum #movie:the-big-chill #movie:the-fly #movie:jurassic-park #movie:independence-day #movie:the-life-aquatic #movie:the-grand-budapest-hotel #movie:thor-ragnarok #_uuid:e387b547-c931-35e3-ad99-bfdde64b7eaf #_draft:true

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'Oh, hai Mark!': Tommy Wiseau explains how the 'Disaster Artist' scene veered from real life

Tommy Wiseau famously cosigned The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s Oscar-nominated look at the making of the 2003 midnight classic The Room, by saying the film was “99.9 percent accurate.” Wiseau initially complained about the lighting, but ultimately it was the far-from-athletic manner in which Franco depicted him throwing a football in the film’s memorable “male bonding” scenes that irked him.

But there were plenty of other moments that were “exaggerated” for the big-screen adaptation of the book of the same name, penned by The Room star Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell.

During a recent Facebook Live interview with Yahoo Entertainment (watch above), Wiseau pointed to the infinitely mimicked “Oh, hai Mark!” scene that is so prominent in the film, it accounted for its entire first trailer.

In The Disaster Artist, Wiseau continually muffs the non-sequituring monologue (“I did not hit her! It’s not true! It’s bullshit! I did not hit her! I did not!… Oh, hai Mark.”), so Seth Rogen’s script supervisor — and eventually the whole cast and crew — feed him the lines.

“On [The Room] set, we didn’t do that,” Wiseau said. ” Because I was always saying, ‘You have to be quiet’ when we’re [doing] the lines. Any line means something. But people didn’t realize my vision.”

Overall, Wiseau called it an “emotional” experience watching Franco et al. film The Disaster Artist. And he maintains that he’s ultimately very satisfied with the final product. “They did a very good job,” he said. ” They had a good pace. I think the music’s pretty good. The story is right on the money. … And it wasn’t a parody, which I loved.”

Wiseau is still a bit salty about that football tossing, though. “He threw the football like a little girl, so I didn’t like that,” he said. “I don’t throw the football like that. I am very keen on how I throw the football.”

To see how Wiseau throws the football in real life, just skip ahead to the end of our chat above (around minute 30) and behold some good old-fashioned male bonding.

The Disaster Artist hits DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday.

Watch Wiseau talk about meeting Tonya Harding at the Golden Globes:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

Do you need to see ‘The Room’ before ‘The Disaster Artist’? The screenwriters weigh in.

Where is Tommy Wiseau from? We asked him at the Golden Globes

Watch Tommy Wiseau of ‘The Room’ get down (sort of) to a music video by the Armed

#Facebook Live #movie:the-room #_author:Kevin Polowy #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #News #movie:the-disaster-artist #_uuid:6c58a412-427f-3d78-bc07-ddcbd55dc1b8 #Interviews #Tommy Wiseau #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

[kevinpolowy]

Helen Mirren talks 'Leisure Seeker,' Donald Trump rallies, and why she's never had a celebrity crush

Helen Mirren at the 90th Academy Awards. (Photo: Time)

“Who is Anna Magnani?”

You better know your classic world cinema if you’re lucky enough to enter the orbit of Helen Mirren. That trivia question is what we were greeted with by the 72-year-old Oscar winner at a recent Los Angeles press day for her new drama, The Leisure Seeker. (Magnani, in case you don’t know and you encounter Dame Helen one day, was an Academy Award-winning actress who rose to prominence in the 1950s and has been described as “the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema”).

Mirren is best known for pond-crossing imports like The Queen and Gosford Park yet has recently dabbled in more mainstream (and more “high-octane”) fare like the Red movies and The Fate of the Furious. Her heart remains in less, how shall we say, volatile stories, as evidenced by her latest project, The Leisure Seeker, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination earlier this year.

Directed by Paolo Virzì, the story follows a retired New England couple (Mirren and Donald Sutherland) who take off for a road trip to the Florida Keys in the titular 1975 Winnebago, much to the terror of their children. The RV’s pilot, John Spencer (Sutherland), is suffering from Alzheimer’s, while Ella (Mirren) is harboring her own secret health woes.

In her interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Mirren talked about why she initially balked at the heavy subject material of Leisure Seeker, how she’d handle a Donald Trump rally, and why she’s never been the type to have a celebrity crush.

Yahoo Entertainment: What made you hop on board The Leisure Seeker? Helen Mirren: I [initially] didn’t want to go into the subject of the movie. I just did not want to do any movies ever in my life about people dying of cancer or people getting Alzheimer’s. I was like, I don’t want to go there. But this was a beautiful love story with those elements involved. And also the sensibility of the film director, Paolo Virzì, was so humanistic and amusing, lightly comedic, that I thought maybe it would be fun to do.

And you get to work with the great Donald Sutherland. He can be very intimidating, though. He doesn’t take any guff. No, he doesn’t. But I tease him, so that’s all right.

I feel like you don’t take any guff, either. Who takes less guff, you or Donald Sutherland? Um, probably Donald. I’m more patient than he is. I’m a very patient person, actually.

Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren in The Leisure Seeker. (Photo: Sony Pictures Classic via AP)

His character suffers from Alzheimer’s, so he’s constantly pivoting between being lucid and being fuzzy, where he thinks he’s in a different time and place. Did he use that as an opportunity to go off script and kind of you keep you off balance? I think he’s wonderful in this film, absolutely fantastic. We both improvised quite a lot. It was very loose. We got into our characters quite deeply so we could improvise around them quite easily. … I think Donald really enjoyed that, it gives you a kind of freedom playing that. You’re not rigidly stuck to your lines and your character. 

And if you don’t remember a line, you’re good. [Laughs] Exactly. I want those roles.

It takes place during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, obviously a very specific moment in contemporary American times. It doesn’t directly play into the story, but how do you think the time setting informed the story in general? I think that was very much Paolo’s understanding. I love any movie where you’re looking at the country through the eyes of the foreigner. … Two that come to my mind are Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas and John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy. Both are an outsider’s view of quintessential America. And because of that outsider’s view of quintessential America, you get a perspective that’s a little bit more interesting than just an American would have. And I think that scene [where John and Ella inadvertently end up at a Trump rally] , that was a part of Paolo’s Italian vision.

Like many folks in this industry, you’ve been pretty critical of Trump. How would you survive an actual Donald Trump rally? Um, by being objective and curious. That’s probably how I’d survive. Because in the end, all humans are the same. They all love their dog and they’re all having problems at home, or whatever. There’s a common humanity with all of us. … Certain days maybe I’d run the other way.

Ella expresses her love for Marlon Brando at one point. Who have been your celebrity crushes over the years? Oh! Interesting question. I’m not a crushy sort of person, I never was. I never had pictures of pop stars up on my walls. I didn’t want to be fan, I wanted to be the person that people were fans of. That’s not to say I don’t admire people. Anna Magnani. Maybe she’s my celebrity crush. Put that down so people have to look her up.

The Leisure Seeker is now playing in select cities.

Watch the trailer:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

Helen Mirren wants in again on ‘Fast and Furious’ — but driving this time is ‘essential’

Helen Mirren shares the sweet way she and Taylor Hackford celebrated their 20th anniversary

Helen Mirren explains why her house is haunted in this exclusive ‘Winchester’ clip

#_author:Kevin Polowy #_uuid:6ae451a5-7f8b-3cc2-a299-b35f1235505b #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #News #movie:the-leisure-seeker #Helen Mirren #Interviews #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

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'Everybody wants to be seen': Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling on 'Wrinkle' costar Oprah's best wisdom

As the Three Ladies of A Wrinkle in Time, Ava DuVernay’s new adaptation of the 1962 summer reading list staple, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, and Oprah Winfrey worked extremely closely with one another. Which means Witherspoon and Kaling had the chance to ask the woman otherwise known as America’s Mother Goddess (she prefers “Sister Goddess,” FYI) “a billion questions.”

At the film’s Los Angeles press day, we asked Witherspoon and Kaling for the best knowledge they had dropped on them from the iconic O.

“How to make a margarita,” Kaling cracked (watch above). “Listen, the things that she says, the anecdotes that  she tells you, can open up your whole mind to [all] your experiences. But I will say, her margaritas are pretty amazing.”

She also makes killer homemade truffle popcorn, according to Witherspoon and costar Chris Pine. But there was one little nugget of insight from Winfrey that resonated most with the Big Little Lies star. “Something beautiful she said to me: I said, ‘What was the thing that you learned the most on The Oprah Show?’ And she said, ‘Everybody wants to be seen.’”

To Witherspoon, it relates perfectly to Wrinkle, for which DuVernay reimagined the main character of Meg Murry as a teen of mixed race.

“If you talk about this movie in that perspective, little girls have always looked the same way on film, and mainly it’s little boys starring in movies,” she said. “So seeing a little girl who’s a person of color at the center of this huge Disney movie is profound. And people want to be seen.”

A Wrinkle in Time is now in theaters.

Watch the cast talk more about how A Wrinkle in Time was “Ava DuVernayed”:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘We’re in the midst’ of Hollywood change: Oprah, ‘Wrinkle in Time’ co-stars talk more diverse blockbusters

Oprah Winfrey adores her ‘Wrinkle in Time’ Barbie because she was too poor for the real doll as a kid

Oprah explains why she makes so few public appearances with Stedman

#_author_id:97e0bfc0-9e83-11e3-bfb8-cce40eaac22c #movie:a-wrinkle-in-time #News #video #Interviews #Oprah Winfrey #Reese Witherspoon #Mindy Kaling #_uuid:7a4b0dbb-d514-3b8b-82e4-358d62e2d1e9 #_draft:true

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'Last Jedi' mystery solved: John Boyega explains why Finn had different haircut, costume in set footage

If you happened to go Deep Nerd on a that behind-the-scenes video released from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, you may have noticed that Finn (John Boyega) was spotted with a different haircut and different costume than anything we saw in the actual movie. What gives?

Well, Boyega had an explanation when Yahoo Entertainment caught up with him a recent press day for his upcoming sci-fi sequel Pacific Rim Uprising.

Turns out the footage was from a screen test he did with breakout star Kelly Marie Tran; Boyega wasn’t in production yet, thus his un-Finn-like fade.

As for the wears, “When Finn was escaping, he was actually supposed to be in Resistance pilot gear,” Boyega said (watch above), referencing the scene he’s caught (and subsequently tased for) attempting to bolt from the Vice Admiral Holdo-led ship by Tran’s mechanic Rose Tico.

Another thing we didn’t see in The Last Jedi: a funeral procession for lost hero Han Solo (who caught a lightsaber to the heart from son Ben/Kylo Ren during that fateful bridge confrontation in The Force Awakens), a sequence that was included in The Last Jedi‘s new novelization.

Boyega has gone on record (repeatedly) for being a hardcore Han enthusiast, but he didn’t seem bothered that movie audiences didn’t get to witness a proper sendoff.

“[There was] no need,” Boyega said. “Keep the story moving.”

Boyega even handed out some posthumous tough love. “He knows what he got into walking onto that damn bridge. As Finn I was kind of like, ‘Oh no!’ As a Star Wars fan I was like [stone-faced], ‘Han. You should’ve stayed at home.”

It did allow us to entertain the notion that Han (Harrison Ford) would return someday in the form a Force Ghost. “I pray he does because he would be the best Force Ghost ever,” Boyega laughed, before launching into a golden impersonation.

Pacific Rim Uprising opens March 23.

Watch the trailer:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Last Jedi’ breakout Kelly Marie Tran reveals which ‘Star Wars’ characters caused her to geek out on set

Fan-favorite Phasma gets dramatically different ending in this ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ deleted scene

Here’s John Boyega piloting in an epic Jaeger-on-Jaeger battle from ‘Pacific Rim Uprising’

#Star Wars #_author:Kevin Polowy #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #John Boyega #News #movie:star-wars-the-last-jedi #video #Interviews #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_uuid:85f84eb0-5e53-3d7d-82aa-7ca461f5611e

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'We're in the midst' of Hollywood change: Oprah, 'Wrinkle in Time' co-stars talk more diverse blockbusters

The record-breaking success of Disney and Marvel’s Black Panther — and what it means for studio tentpoles aimed at more diverse audiences — has been well documented these past few weeks.

Following on its heels comes another groundbreaking Disney release: A Wrinkle in Time, Ava Duvernay’s adaptation of the beloved 1962 novel that becomes the first $100 million movie directed by an African-American woman. And like Panther, Wrinkle is projected to earn some serious green in theaters.

2018 is clearly shaping up to be a groundbreaking year at the box office, a fact that’s not lost on the film’s biggest stars.

“This is it, it’s all changing,” said Mindy Kaling (Mrs. Who), who pointed to last year’s sleeper hit (and Best Picture nominee) Get Out for helping change the face of what a modern-day movie smash looks like. “For a while, independent movies were the home to diverse talent. And now that’s not the case anymore. It’s really great.”

Oprah Winfrey (Mrs. Which) echoed that sentiment. “We’re in it, we’re in the midst of it, right now, we’re feeling it,” the media mogul and actress said.

Added Reese Witherspoon (Mrs. Whatsit), the third member of the “Mrs.” triumvirate: “It’s because of audiences. You vote for what kind of movie you want to see by taking your kids and spending your money,” she said. “By choosing [these films], you’re saying to the studios, ‘These are the movies I want to see.’ And I think that’s beautiful.”

A Wrinkle in Time opens March 9.

Watch Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling talk about having Barbie dolls modeled after them:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

How Ava DuVernay updated ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ for the big screen by embracing diversity

‘A Wrinkle in Time’ trailer: A thrilling fantasy journey for Disney’s newest warrior

Ava DuVernay made Oprah, Reese, and Mindy her ‘little dolls’ in their colorful ‘Wrinkle in Time’ looks

#movie:a-wrinkle-in-time #Mindy Kaling #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #Reese Witherspoon #_draft:true #video #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_uuid:5f8e62bf-9ef6-3eb0-970a-cd79e68b287a #_author:Kevin Polowy #News #Oprah Winfrey #Interviews #Ava DuVernay

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How Ava DuVernay updated 'A Wrinkle in Time' for the big screen

“It was Ava DuVernayed.”

That’s how Mindy Kaling explains how Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 sci-fi novel A Wrinkle in Time was modernized for the big screen by director Ava DuVernay (Selma, 13th), from a script adaptation by Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell. (Kaling, Oprah Winfrey, and Reese Witherspoon play the three Mrs.’es.)

Though the book was published more than 50 years ago, the new Disney release feels very much of-the-moment, and a lot of that comes from the decision by DuVernay, long one of Hollywood’s most vocal proponents of inclusion, to make her preteen heroine, Meg Murry (whose ethnicity is unclear in the book), biracial, as played by breakout star Storm Reid.

“Our job was just to say, ‘OK, we’re looking at this story through the lens of 2018 — what do we do to update it?’” DuVernay told us (watch above). “One of the biggest things is to make sure that all kinds of people can see themselves in Madeleine’s story, so the casting of Storm Reid was a big part of that.”

In the film, Meg’s scientist parents are played by Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. “I think it’s really down to Ava’s vision,” Mbatha-Raw (Belle, Beauty and the Beast) said. “I think she had a very strong idea of how she wanted to depict this film with Storm at the center, and surround her with these powerful women and this incredibly diverse cast.”

A Wrinkle in Time opens March 9.

Watch Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling talk about having Barbie dolls modeled after them:

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘A Wrinkle in Time’ trailer: A thrilling fantasy journey for Disney’s newest warrior

Ava DuVernay made Oprah, Reese, and Mindy her ‘little dolls’ in their colorful ‘Wrinkle in Time’ looks

Oprah Winfrey, Recy Taylor, and Hollywood’s untold stories

#Storm Reid #_uuid:d161cede-723e-3a81-be95-235c6723f799 #movie:a-wrinkle-in-time #Mindy Kaling #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #Gugu Mbatha-Raw #video #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_author:Kevin Polowy #News #Chris Pine #Oprah Winfrey #Interviews #Ava DuVernay