Sia Apologizes; Inside John and the Hole; Fantastic Beasts Paused

In today’s Movie News Rundown: Sia apologizes to autistic people after her film Music scores two Golden Globe nominations; the director of the Sundance film John and the Hole explains his beautiful dark twisted fantasy; and Fantastic Beasts is on hold due to COVID-19. Also: A Tribeca Film Festival veteran makes a bold move toward “conscious entertainment.”

Fantastic Beasts Paused: The third Fantastic Beasts film paused its U.K. shoot “out of an abundance of caution” because a “team member” tested positive for COVID-19, Warner Bros. told The Hollywood Reporter. The person wasn’t identified, but we can rule out Johnny Depp, since he was asked to exit the film last year. Fantastic Beasts 3 is scheduled to be released on July 15, 2022.

‘Disney+ For Adults’: Early in her career, Trina Wyatt launched the Tribeca Film Festival with Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal, and was the festival’s founding director. Now she’s leading CGood TV, or Conscience Good TV, a new platform where “entertainment fuels personal growth and collective transformation.” It also has a large private community for storytellers — like you, perhaps? — who want to raise consciousness through their work. She talks with Eric Steuer about the endeavor on the latest MovieMaker podcast, which you can check out on Apple or Spotify or right here:

https://shows.acast.com/moviemaker-interviews/episodes/trina-wyatt-cgood-tv

A Dark Bunker Fable: Director Pasual Sisto’s disturbing Sundance film John and the Hole is about a 13-year-old boy who, for no apparent reason, drugs his mom, dad and older sister and traps them in an unfinished bunker. It sometimes plays out like a fairy tale, and Sisto tells us he wanted it to feel like “a contemporary fable.”

More Uplifting: Finally saw Coda, the Sian Heder musical drama that won big at Sundance and received $25 million from Apple Studios — what a charming, beautiful film. If you loved Sing Street, you may love Coda even more. Sing Street star Ferdia Walsh-Peelo also has a prominent role in Coda, and the entire cast is outstanding, especially lead Emilia Jones.

Sia’s Autism Apology: After receiving two Golden Globe nominations for her film Music, Sia apologized on Instagram for casting a non-autistic dancer, Maddie Ziegler (pictured above), as a non-verbal person on the autism spectrum. She also plans to add a warning to the film about scenes in which Ziegler’s character is physically restrained. “MUSIC in no way condones or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people. There are autistic occupational therapists that specialize in sensory processing who can be consulted to explain safe ways to provide proprioceptive, deep-pressure feedback to help w meltdown safety,” reads the warning, as tweeted by Sia. And she said she would remove the scenes “from all future printings,” explaining: “I listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility, my research was clearly not thorough enough, not wide enough.” Sia or whomever runs her Twitter account then deleted the entire account, but not before Variety captured the tweets.

Here’s a Song from Sing Street:That is in my head 35 percent of the time.