Movie News: Mickey Rourke went abroad to finish a film during COVID-19; digital piracy has spiked during quarantine, and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are trying to do their part for a vaccine. Also: The director of Extraction tells us if Chris Hemsworth can fight in real life.
Mickey Rourke Shoots Through COVID-19: The Mickey Rourke film Warhunt kept shooting through the COVID-19 outbreak, Variety exclusively reports. The crew shot in Riga, Latvia, by following government guidelines that included wearing masks and gloves, twice-daily temperature checks, social distancing, and disinfecting equipment. Rourke adjusted his schedule to beat the country closing its borders, producer Ya-Fai Suen told Variety. Shooting is now complete on the the film, while is about American GIs facing off with witches. We have some thoughts, but why don’t you go first? Visit our comments section below.
Piracy Spikes: Muso, a company that studies digital piracy, found that traffic on piracy sites jumped more than 40 percent after stay-at-home orders in the U.S. and U.K., The Hollywood Reporter says. There was also a 100 percent increase in MovieMaker.com spicing up a straightforward story with an exciting image from the thrill-packed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
There Will Be Blood: Tom Hanks says on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me that he Rita Wilson have offered their blood and plasma to coronavirus research, in the hopes that it might help lead to a vaccine. They tested positive for COVID-19 when they were in Australia for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic, in which Hanks plays Col. Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager. Remember that under Parker’s contract with Elvis, he’s entitled to 50 percent of the royalties from any vaccine.
Coming Soon: This week MovieMaker will release its annual list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. It will be a little different this year, for obvious reasons. Check the front page of MovieMaker.com, follow us on @moviemakermag, or, if you’re subscribed to our newsletters, keep an eye on your email.
Can Chris Hemsworth Fight for Real? Watching the insane 12-minute continuous fight scene in Extraction made me wonder: Can Chris Hemsworth fight in real life? I asked director Sam Hargrave, a martial artist and stuntman, who says Hemsworth is more Cliff Booth than Rick Dalton.
Also: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will begin streaming two months early on Disney+ in honor of “May the 4th,” aka Star Wars Day, Disney announced this morning.
Drive-In Recommendation: This weekend we watched the documentary At the Drive-In on Amazon Prime and it was pure bliss — a lovely look at how a few dedicated movie lovers saved Pennsylvania’s more-than-70-year-old Mahoning Drive-in Theater. It’s also essential viewing if you work at an old theater that hasn’t made the transition to digital, and are looking for a cheap and brilliant way to show digital films — or even films on VHS — on a big screen. Here’s the trailer:
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It’d be great to find out if no one got sick on that set in Latvia. If that’s the case, there’s hope for the industry. Maybe we can go back to work sooner if we take the precautions they did and more. Hopefully there’ll be a follow up article with a picture that doesn’t show a group of people gathered around a monitor. You can get direct video feed into iPads and iPhones with people sitting/standing six feet apart, you know. Also, the producer’s comment about dedicated makeup kits for actors is not the best example of new sanitary guidelines; that’s already a common practice on professional film sets. I’d like to know how they handled catering, bathrooms, and shuttles, and of course, scenes requiring background performers.