Emilia Clarke Talks Brain Aneurysms; Dispatches From Outfest; Opportunities for Screenwriters

Emilia Clarke opens up about the brain aneurysms she suffered while she was making Game of Thrones; Highlights from this week’s 40th annual Outfest L.A.; If you’re an aspiring screenwriter from an underrepresented community, there’s a new opportunity for you. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

Dispatches From Outfest: The 40th annual Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Film Festival is happening this week from July 14-24, and I’ll be covering the highlights, so stick around.

Anything Really Is Possible: On Outfest opening night, I spoke to Pose star Billy Porter on the red carpet about his absolutely groundbreaking, must-see film Anything’s Possible. It’s about a Black trans high school girl who actually gets the boy she likes, and it’s so refreshing and hopeful and heartwarming. That’s out July 22 on Amazon Prime Video. I also spoke to Outfest’s executive director Damien Navarro about what’s new for the festival’s milestone anniversary here. Stay tuned for more coverage throughout the week, and stop by the festival if you’re in L.A.!

Box Office: Thor: Love and Thunder is still ruling the box office, earning $46 million domestically during its second weekend, according to Variety. The Marvel superhero movie starring Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman has brought in a whopping $497.9 million globally so far.

But Don’t Forget About Crawdads: Sony’s Where the Crawdads Sing starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and based on the best-selling novel by Delia Owens did better than expected during its opening weekend with $17 million at the box office, Variety added. I highly recommend taking a trip to the theater to see Crawdads — it’s a good one to watch with your mom or your best friend. Check out my interview with the film’s director, Olivia Newman, here.

Emilia Clarke: The Game of Thrones actress opened up about the two very serious brian aneurysms she suffered during her time on the HBO show and how lucky she is to be alive today during an episode of BBC‘s Sunday Morning. “The amount of my brain that is no longer usable — it’s remarkable that I am able to speak, sometimes articulately, and live my life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions,” she said on the program, according to USA Today. “I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that.”

She Will: Do you like witches? Are you fascinated by the witch trials that took place in Europe and the U.S. in the 1700s? Well, I’ve got the movie for you. It’s called She Will, and it’s about a woman who goes to a Scottish artist’s retreat to recover from major surgery only to discover that the spirits of women who were burned at the stake there hundreds of years earlier still haunt the land. I spoke with director Charlotte Colbert about all the true historic details behind the story. And good news — this gorgeous movie is now playing in select theaters.

Sundance and Adobe: The Sundance Institute has announced the 2022 class of the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship. The artist-development program includes a weeklong lab with mentorship, internship, and more professional opportunities, plus a grant and a year-long subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud. The 10 winners, who were chosen out of 600 submissions to the Adobe Short Film Challenge, are Rubing Zhang, Thomas Percy Kim, Advik Beni, Esteban Bailey, Tae Catalina Low, Justin Kim WooSŏk, Fernando Rocha, Giovanna Molina, Anna R. Japaridze, and Mykea Fairweather Perry. Congrats to them!

NFMLA, NALIP, and STARZ: NewFilmmakers Los Angeles and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers are teaming up with STARZ to give emerging TV writers from underrepresented communities a chance to break into Hollywood and write for premium cable shows. 10 writes will be selected for phase one of The STARZ #TakeTheLead Writers’ Intensive, including mentorship by industry professionals and developing an episode treatment and pitch. From those, four writers will be chosen for phase two, which includes writing a full episode spec script. The deadline to apply is July 29 via Coverfly, so if you’re interested, waste no time.

Main Image: Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones. Photograph by Helen Sloan/HBO