No doubt it’s a smash! Alex Garland‘s CIVIL WAR debuts atop the Box Office this weekend with a smashing $25 million for A24, an all-time high debut for the buzzy independent distributor. The dystopian Drama Thriller gets 83% on the Tomatometer. Elevation Pictures release in Canada.
In second is GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE with $14 million for Warner Bros., taking it to $157 million in its domestic run.
Third goes to GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE with $4.6 million for Sony Pictures, a tally of $95.8 million to date.
MONKEY MAN finds itself in fourth in its second weekend out for Universal Pictures with $4.5 million, a total $18.1 million made thus far.
KUNG FU PANDA 4 rounds this Top Five out with $4.4 million for Universal Pictures, bringing its run to $172 million.
By David Baldwin
Oscar-nominated Writer/Director Alex Garland is best known for his critically acclaimed sci-fi/horror films Ex Machina and Annihilation. This weekend, he takes on an entirely different beast with CIVIL WAR, a relentlessly paced, breakneck thriller involving a group of journalists traveling across the war-torn countryside of the former United States in hopes of interviewing the third term President before he surrenders to invading factions. The cast includes Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jesse Plemons and Nick Offerman.
We had the chance to chat virtually with Garland about the film and his process. Here’s what we learned:
Can you speak about the importance of sound design in CIVIL WAR? Did you always intend for the film to be shown in IMAX?
Garland: I never dreamed we’d be able to show this in IMAX. And I was really pleased, and the people I worked with were extremely pleased, that that’s where we ended up. It’s a great environment to show a film. It’s not just the screen, it’s as you said, the sound system.
In terms of the evolution of [the sound design], I think what I should really say first and foremost is that I work and have worked for more than two decades with a really great sound designer [named] Glenn [Freemantle]. I’ve never not worked with him actually. And a lot of what you hear is not my work, it’s his work and it’s his thoughtfulness and it’s his understanding of the tone of the film. What I do is I cut the Film with an editor and then Glenn will take it away for a few weeks [after] we have a discussion, we talk about some of the ideas. In CIVIL WAR, a lot of that was about reality and it was about a mixture of silence and attack…Then Glenn takes it away and he just works on it and really what happens is I arrive a few weeks later to see what he’s done. Then we go through another process which is modulating and trying out little experiments and stuff. But the bulk of that is him working with his team in quite an autonomous way. So I just want to give the credit where it’s due.
Sound is extremely important. People kind of know [that] because if you watch a Horror film and it’s creeping you out and you’re at home, mute it, and suddenly it’s just not scary anymore. You take away the sound design and you take away the score and suddenly it all seems kind of empty. It might even become instantly a bit silly. It becomes the opposite of frightening almost immediately. So sound is hugely, hugely important in cinema.
Your previous films live in the science fiction/horror genres but CIVIL WAR does not. What made you decide to write this film?
Garland: The genre flows from the subject matter. The genre I saw this as was a war movie, but it could have been a Sci-Fi movie. I could have set it for example on a distant planet, and it would be [an] allegory…But it didn’t feel right because part of the currency of this film is about how much of this is real? How much of the dangers that are being offered up, how much are they real dangers? What would it take to get there? What are the behaviour patterns and thought patterns that could actually lead either America or my own country [the United Kingdom] or other countries around the world into this space?
Your films centre around strong female protagonists. Why do you gravitate towards a female point-of-view versus male?
Garland: In some ways I don’t really differentiate that much between a female point-of-view or a male point-of-view, which means I don’t ask – in some ways – too many questions of it. But I think it’s less political than it might seem. It doesn’t really contain a statement of any sort. I’m in my mid-’50s and I grew up watching films through the ’70s and ’80s and into the ’90s…a lot of them I absolutely love but in almost every movie, it would be a male lead. That’s just how films worked back then. And what that means is when I sit down to write a film, on some level I find it internally just slightly more boring if it’s a male lead because I feel like I’ve inhabited those stories so much. I find it just slightly more interesting [to write a female lead]…It’s like a 49 percent, 51 percent thing. It’s not a huge sort of urge. It doesn’t have an agenda. It’s got more to do with familiarity actually I think.
Is SPOILER dead at the end of the Movie?
Garland:*nods* [They are] brown bread as we would say in the UK, yep. *chuckles*
Elevation Pictures release CIVIL WAR in theatres on Friday, April 12, 2024.
Review here.
(Photo credit: Mr. Will Wong)
Acclaimed Novelest, Screenwriter and Director Alex Garland makes a return to Toronto in support of his highly-anticipated new feature CIVIL WAR. Known for his work on classics like 28 DAYS LATER, EX MACHINA, DREDD and more, Garland is no stranger to the City, having promoted ANNIHILATION here in 2018.
Garland’s latest debuted at SXSW ’24 to huge raves, centering on a group of journalists who travel across the United States during a rapidly escalating Second American Civil War, which has engulfed the entire nation. Many are calling the Film an allegory for the current political climate we are living in. It stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailey Spaeny, Nick Offerman and more and opens in theatres this Friday, April 12, 2024 via Elevation Pictures in Canada.
Our David Baldwin will be chatting with Garland during his Press Tour. Chat and Review coming soon!
A snap of Garland out and about doing the rounds today, including a visit to Breakfast Television! He caps off the day with a special Q&A tonight following an Advance Screening of the Film.
(Photo/video credit: Mr. Will Wong/Elevation Pictures)
Elevation Pictures x Mr. Will want to give Readers a chance to win passes to an Advance Screening of CIVIL WAR. Screenings take place as follows on April 10, 2024 at 7 PM:
Toronto – Scotiabank Theatre Toronto, IMAX (Note 6:30 PM start time in Toronto)
Vancouver – Scotiabank Theatre Vancouver, AVX
Calgary – Scotiabank Theatre Chinook, IMAX
Ottawa – Scotiabank Theatre Ottawa, IMAX
Synopsis: An adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razor’s edge.
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Nick Offerman, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny
To enter for a chance to win, click “like” on this Post at MR. WILL ON FACEBOOK. In the comments there, tell us which city! You also have the option of entering from posts on our IG account and also our X account.
Rules and regulations here.
Elevation Pictures release CIVIL WAR on April 12, 2024.
(Photo/video credit: Elevation Pictures)
Hot off her Academy Award nomination yesterday, here’s the new Trailer for MEN, starring Jessie Buckley. The Film is by Alex Garland who brought us Ex Machina and Annihilation.
Synopsis:
In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper (Jessie Buckley) retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to have found a place to heal. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears in visionary filmmaker Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina, Annihilation) feverish, shape-shifting new horror film.
VVS Films release MEN May 20, 2022.
(Photo/video credit: VVS Films)
By David Baldwin for Mr. Will Wong
In 2015, we were blown away by Ex Machina from Screenwriter and first-time Director Alex Garland. The Film was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards and won Best Visual Effects. Zip-forward three years, and Garland has delivered another mind-blowing piece of Science Fiction in Annihiliation. Garland was present for the first Canadian screening of the highly-anticipated Film at TIFF Bell Lightbox tonight, followed by a Q&A with TIFF’s Artistic Director Cameron Bailey.
The Film centers around Lena (Natalie Portman), a Biologist who joins a team of scientists and researchers who venture into a classified area known as “The Shimmer” to uncover its secrets. The less you know about the plot of Annihilation, the better. But suffice it to say, Garland’s Film will leave you breathless and begging to discuss each and every twist.
On the subject of casting, Garland said each actor was cast traditionally and “kind of pushed against each other in a good way. They had very different energies.” He praised the Ensemble, along with those behind-the-scenes he referred to as the “Collective”. After Garland writes his Screenplays, he hands them off to his Production Designers and other members of his crew – some of which he has been working with for 20 years! – and they help shape the Film from the ground up through “conversations”.
“It’s an abstract Novel,” Garland said when asked about adapting the first chapter in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy. He “tried to do an adaptation of what it’s like to read the Book”, and explained that the Screenplay was written more as a “memory of the Book” as opposed to a direct adaptation. Without spoiling too much, Garland suggests “The Film is about self-destruction,” and that by playing within the realm of Genre Filmmaking, he was given a “free gift in what you can subvert,” allowing the Film to take on multiple tones, styles and genres.
Garland spoke at length about his take on Auteurism (he prefers working as a team), how he writes female versus male characters (he writes them the same way), and his feelings on adapting the rest of VanderMeer’s Trilogy (sequels are “not my scene”), but received the biggest audience response when he asked if his friend Rob was in the audience. He had never met the Toronto native, but the two have been playing PS4 games online for a number of years. Garland invited his gaming buddy out for a drink after the Q&A, much to the delight of the audience.
While it was a fun and enlightening event, the last question of the night finally addressed the elephant in the room – Netflix. Annihiliation’s distributor Paramount Pictues recently sold international streaming rights to the Company, and will only give the Film a traditional theatrical release in the US, Canada and China. All other foreign territories will see the Film released exclusively on Netflix (much like the surprise post Super Bowl release of Paramount’s The Cloverfield Paradox). “I don’t have a problem with the small screen at all,” Garland said, noting his next project was an 8-part Series for FX. But he added, “This Film was designed for theatres. The immersive experience that we collectively hope happens at the end is not going to happen on a laptop.”
We’ll have more on Annihilation in our review next week, but for our Toronto and Montreal fans, be sure to enter our contest now to win passes to an Advanced Scteening of the Film here.
Paramount Pictures Canada release ANNIHILIATION on Friday, February 23, 2018.
(Photo credit: David Baldwin)
Paramount Pictures Canada x Mr. Will want to give Readers in Toronto and Montreal and chance to see ANNIHILATION!
Screenings take place as follows:
Toronto: Screening is Wednesday, February 21st, Cineplex Scotiabank, Time: 7:30 pm
Montreal: Screening is Wednesday, February 21st, Cineplex Cinema Banque Scotia Montreal, Time: 7:30pm
Synopsis:
Lena, a biologist and former soldier, joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X – a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscape and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.
From visionary director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later) and based on the acclaimed best-selling Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation stars Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny.
See the Trailer:
Artwork:
To enter to win, click “like” on this Post at MR. WILL ON FACEBOOK and indicate your City.
Paramount Pictures Canada release ANNIHILATION Friday, February 23, 2018.
Official Hashtag: #ANNHILATION
Facebook: /AnnihilationMovie
Twitter: @AnnihilationMov
Instagram: @AnnihilationMovie
(Photo/video credit: Paramount Pictures Canada)
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