Report: Paul Mescal to star in Sam Mendes’ Beatles films
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Looks like Paul Mescal is going from playing a gladiator to a Beatle.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, during a conversation between Mescal’s Gladiator II director Ridley Scott and director Christopher Nolan at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles Tuesday, Scottrevealed that Mescal has been cast in SamMendes’ upcoming films about The Beatles.
When talking about his next project, the movie The Dog Stars, Scott was asked if Mescal was going to be in the film. At first Scott said that he was, before suggesting Mescal’s schedule may be an issue.
“Paul is actually stacked up, doing the Beatles next,” he said. “So I may have to let him go.”
While Ridley didn’t say who Mescal would be playing, The Hollywood Reporter notes that rumors have suggested he was the frontrunner to play Paul McCartney.
Mendes’ Beatles project was announced back in February, with the director revealing he planned to make four separate films, one for each member of the group — McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison.
Sony Pictures is the studio behind the movies, and it marks the first time Apple Corps Ltd. and The Beatles have granted a studio the rights to the life stories of band members and their legendary catalog of music.
No official casting has been announced for the films, although Ringo recently let it slip in an Entertainment Tonight interview that Barry Keoghan had been cast to play him.
Renée Zellweger is back for one more hilarious and romantic adventure in the official trailer for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, directed by Michael Morris.
The clip, which debuted online Tuesday and is set to “These Words” by Natasha Bedingfield, features the Oscar winner reprising the most iconic role of her career, one she played in 2001 and brought back in sequels released in 2004 and 2016.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy finds the titular character’s happily ever after cut short after husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) is killed on a humanitarian mission in Sudan.
“In life, there are memories that will never leave us,” Zellweger says in one of her iconic voice-overs. “But sometimes, those memories are suddenly … all we’re left with.”
Bridget, now a single mother to her 9-year-old son, Billy, and 4-year-old daughter, Mabel, leans on her friends — and her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) — as she attempts to move on from the tragedy years later and put herself back out there in the modern age of dating.
“Bridget, you’re a widow with two wonderful children. My advice to you is put your own oxygen mask on first,” Bridget’s gynecologist Dr. Rawlings (Emma Thompson) says.
Daniel even teases, “You’re effectively a nun. A very, very naughty nun.”
It wouldn’t be a rom-com without multiple love interests, and this movie is no different. Bridget finds herself pursued by a hunky younger man, Roxster (White Lotus actor Leo Woodall), and having a series of awkward run-ins with her son’s science teacher, Mr. Wallaker (12 Years a Slave actor Chiwetel Ejiofor), all while balancing career, family, romance and loss.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy will be released in theaters internationally and stream on Peacock in the United States on Feb. 13.
Back in June, Sir Ian McKellen seemed to downplay a fall off a London stage during a performance of the Shakespeare adaptation Player Kings. A statement at the time said he was in good spirits and would make a speedy recovery. But now, several months later, McKellen reveals the whole thing was pretty scary.
“Apparently, I’m told by the company manager who’s holding my head as I lay on the floor, I said to her, ‘I’ve broken my neck. I’m dying,'” McKellen told ABC Audio in an interview from his home in London. “Now, I don’t remember saying that, but I must have felt it.”
He says he’s fine now, after fracturing his wrist and hurting his back, crediting the fat suit he was wearing in order to play rotund Knight John Falstaff with protecting his ribs and hips in the fall. And while physically he’s almost completely back to normal, the mental effects linger.
“I’m left with some disappointment,” McKellen confesses. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t complete — you know, my pride was bruised. How could this happen to me?” he asks with a chuckle. “And I suspect that although physically I’m healing, I wonder whether deep down there’s something mental or emotional that was jolted that needs to be attended to. And I’m attending to it by not working at the moment and resting.”
McKellen appears to be in a reflective mood as he discusses the fall, and his new film The Critic, in which he plays a prominent 1930s London theater critic named Jimmy Erskine, a once feared and respected tastemaker trying to recapture his glory days. Reviews, McKellen reveals, are a necessary evil for actors.
“We are seeking for approval. And we’re probably rather pathetic people who need that approval. We’re not confident enough of ourselves. So if you get a good review — oh, it’s an added pleasure. And if you get a bad review, it can be very hurtful,” McKellen admits.
And although he hasn’t been on the receiving end of a lot of bad reviews, the ones he has had are seared in his brain. Take for instance his turn in a Bernard Shaw revival in London’s West End when he was much younger. He starred in the play alongside a pre-Dame Judi Dench and recalls how he overheard a few fellow actors discussing his performance one night at a restaurant.
“One of them was going on and on and on about how dreadful I’d been. And I was typical of these modern young actors, using my voice in the wrong way and drawing attention to myself. And he just simply hadn’t enjoyed it.” McKellen says he laughed off the criticism, but the next night onstage it crept into his consciousness. “And as I looked into the audience talking away, I suddenly thought, ‘My God, every single person in this audience agrees with that actor that I heard last night. They all think I’m rubbish. I shouldn’t be here.’” He says he froze, forgot his lines and Dench had to rescue him.
Still, he swears if there’s a bad review out there, he’s going to read it. “I like to know. If people haven’t enjoyed the film of Cats I’d like to know about it.” 2019’s film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats was savaged by critics, probably the worst-reviewed film McKellen has ever been in. McKellen didn’t get the blame, though. His portrayal of Gus the Theater Cat was mostly praised. And he may be returning to a role that garnered him some of the most praise of his film career: the mighty wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings movies.
“There are going to be a couple of more films, I think, with some of the same characters in it. And I’ve been asked to stand by,” McKellen says. “But there’s no script that I read, and no date. All I can say, as far as I’m concerned, they better be quick.”
Quick, because at 85 years old, McKellen isn’t sure how much time he has left. “I’m rather living a year at a time, rather than two or three years at a time,” he says.
Gandalf is a part of his legacy, so if he can, he’s going to go to New Zealand and put on the robes. Legacy is a theme in The Critic, as well. In his downtime, legacy and what’s next are things McKellen has been thinking about a lot. He remembers going to visit a friend in the hospital, a friend who was dying, and asking him what he was thinking about as his life neared the end.
“And he said, ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’ And that’s rather my view,” McKellen says wistfully. He wants to know what’s going to happen. “How is AI going to really take over? I mean, what is life going to be like? When is the world going to settle down? Is the world going to survive? I won’t know. I won’t know. And I suppose I won’t care because I won’t exist.”
Apple TV+ is running full speed ahead on Slow Horses: The Emmy-winning spy drama has been renewed for a sixth season.
The show that stars Gary Oldman as the leader of a group of dysfunctional British spies — unaffectionately known as the Slow Horses — just had its fourth season premiere on Sept. 4. It was renewed for a fifth season earlier this year.
“Audiences around the world have fallen in love with the Slow Horses, and I’m delighted that Gary Oldman will be leading this star-studded cast on another acerbic and action-packed adventure,” said Apple TV+’s Jay Hunt.
Season six is adapted from Joe Country and Slough House, respectively the sixth and seventh novels in Mick Herron‘s “Slough House” book series.
All four seasons of Slow Horses hold a perfect 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, the streamer points out.
The six-episode sixth season will see “the Slow Horses on the run as Diana Taverner embroils them all in a fatally high-stakes game of retaliation and revenge,” Apple teases.
