Movies

The social satire takes austerity measures to a whole new level

We’ve heard of actors dropping massive amounts of weight in the quest for an Oscar, but for his role in Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, Matt Damon’s weight loss will be more sci-fi, less South Beach.

The Bourne Identity actor has agreed to play a man who undergoes a shrinking procedure as a way to cut costs. His wife agrees to this austerity measure, too, but backs out after he’s already been downsized.

Payne wrote the script for Downsizing with his writing partner Jim Taylor between 2004’s Sideways and 2011’s The Descendants, when it was slated to star Paul Giamatti and Reese Witherspoon. It was tabled so Payne could work on The Descendants (which won a Oscar for its screenplay), and again when he started work directing Nebraska.

But it’s back on track now, and with no financing announced, the team may have to think big to get small.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

The Life Partners actress talks about her upcoming Girls role and why the new Community episodes could still end up back on TV

Gillian Jacobs is about to rule streaming video: her cult hit Community is headed to Yahoo and she has a Netflix series with Judd Apatow in the works. But first, she’s starring in Life Partners, a movie about two co-dependent best friends that hits video-on-demand on Nov. 6 and arrives in theaters in Dec. 5. TIME caught up with the actress to talk about female friendship, her ideal night in and whether this year is the Year of the Gillians.

TIME: Your co-star Leighton Meester said much of this movie was improvised. How was that?
Gillian Jacobs: I think there was a lot of it that was scripted, and then there’s probably a lot of moments in there that are just us goofing around that they kept in. I’d have to re-watch the movie right now to tell you what I remember being improvised. But I remember it was a really loose, fun atmosphere where it just felt like everyone was hanging out.

Is the director like, “Come on guys, get serious, we need to finish this movie”?
We were professionals about it, but I think they were excited that Leighton and I were getting along because we didn’t know each other before we started the movie. That was a big risk for them, casting two people who never really spent time together.

You two do play convincing best friends.
We didn’t have trailers on that movie, so it’d be everyone hanging out in whatever place we were shooting. Sometimes that gets a little tiresome, but a lot of time that leads to people getting to know each other better and hanging out more, which is great.

So is Leighton your BFF now?
I love Leighton! I have not seen her recently — she was in New York for a long time doing Of Mice and Men, but I think she is one of the nicest, sweetest, funniest people I’ve ever worked with.

The main characters, Sasha and Paige, spend a lot of time just lounging around and cracking jokes in this movie. What’s your ideal girls’ night in?
Watching bad TV and eating food that’s not good for you are two key ingredients, I believe. If at some point along the way you get a pedicure, that sounds pretty perfect.

Sasha and Paige also watch a lot of America’s Next Top Model. Are you a fan?
I haven’t been watching that show as much recently as I have everything that’s on Bravo.

So do you have a favorite Real Housewives franchise?
That’s such a hard question.

They’re like your children.
Exactly. They’re each unique and special in their own way. Maybe Beverly Hills, just because I see some of them around L.A. That is a unique thrill — seeing housewives in the wild.

Do you get starstruck with reality stars?
Oh yes, are you kidding me? I was staying at the Trump SoHo in New York when I was shooting Girls, and they put up every reality star there. Every day I would walk through the lobby and see someone incredible and have to text all my friends.

Speaking of Girls, your upcoming role has been shrouded a bit in mystery. Give me a scoop!
I don’t want to get in trouble with Lena or Jenni Konner, so I’m not going to give you anything good, but how about this: there’s an episode where I wear a full set of pajamas as daywear.

Sounds tough.
It’s the most comfortable costume I’ve ever worn.

Have Girls and Life Partners given you new insight into female friendship?
I felt like Life Partners did clearly describe unique things about friendship — not just friendship between girls. I felt like it was really true and honest, and I think I related more to this script, just in terms of my own life and my own problems or shortcomings, way more than I have with other scripts. So that was exciting — you don’t always feel that way.

Your Life Partners love interest is played by Adam Brody, who was dating Leighton while you were filming. The director said that was sometimes awkward. Was it?
Well, I’m a very awkward person. At no point did Leighton or Adam try and make it awkward or say anything — I’m just a nervous Nellie. We’re all also actors, so we’re used to this weird job in which we kiss people who are not are significant others. They’re familiar with the concept.

They were stars of some very important teen dramas. In the battle of The O.C. versus Gossip Girl, where do your loyalties lie?
Well, I have huge gaps in my TV-watching because for a long time I didn’t own a TV. When those shows were on the air, I did not own a television, so I have to sadly say I’m not really that familiar with either one of them. But I do remember a lot of my friends in New York being completely obsessed with Gossip Girl.

You should clear your weekend plans and get caught up.
I have my homework cut out for me.

With Life Partners going to video-on-demand first, Community coming to Yahoo and your upcoming Netflix series, you’re really diving into streaming video. Have you noticed that?
Yeah. I remember a couple years ago my friend [House of Cards creator] Beau Willimon was like, “I’m going to do this show for Netflix,” and I was like “Okay, sure, Netflix.” He was such a visionary to see where television was going. I feel really excited by it. Being on network television is not always the most fun. There’s a lot of pressure and demand for audience and people tuning in to watch it live, and I’m not entirely sure that’s the way people watch things anymore. You’re just hoping and praying people are going to sit down at their TV. If you’re a critically acclaimed but not publicized show, it’s pretty daunting. It’s nice to feel liberated from that.

Does moving to Yahoo give Community a chance to do anything it couldn’t have gotten away with before?
I don’t really know what the new rules are. I wonder if these episodes will eventually have to air on TV because of our syndication deal. I’ve not really had a conversation with anyone about that. I have no idea if they can really go nuts with them, or if they still have to keep them within the rules and regulations of TV.

Were you as surprised bythe move as many us were? It sounded like a last-minute deal.
They don’t really ever tell us anything, so I read about it on Twitter. It was the final day of our contracts. I had heard some rumbling that it might happen but nothing really definite, so I read it like you did. I read it probably on Deadline Hollywood.

I don’t know if you’ve seen Gone Girl, but with the success of Gillian Flynn and her book, and with all the cool projects you have coming up, is this the Year of the Gillians?
Wait, but I have a question, is she Gillian [with a hard G] or Gillian [with a soft G]? Because That’s the great American debate.

She’s [hard G] Gillian like you.
She is?!

Yeah!
Oh my God, I’m so excited to know shes a hard G-Gillian. There aren’t very many of us.

Disney is finally prepared to admit it's a musical

Peeta is alive, but is he in his right mind?

Spoilers ahead. Sort of.

Just two weeks before the hotly anticipated Mockingjay: Part 1 hits theaters, Hunger Games fans got a sneak peek at life in District 13. In this clip, Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss is stunned to find out that Peeta, her confidant throughout the deadly competition, is alive following the disastrous end to Catching Fire‘s Quarter Quell games where former champions were forced to face each other to the death–until Katniss shut the entire thing down, leaving Peeta behind and presumably dead.

In this clip, Katniss, who’s not-so-willingly working as the symbol of the independence movement from the Capitol, gets a chilling wake-up call from Stanley Tucci’s Caesar Flickerman, the Ryan Seacrest of Panem, who is interviewing Katniss’ on-again-off-again love interest. “What really happened on that final and controversial night?” he asks

Readers know, of course, that Peeta might not be in his right mind.

The film hits theaters November 21.

Netflix will produce a new series based on the books A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (author Daniel Handler’s pseudonym).

The darkly funny series follows Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire after their parents die in a fire. And as the title implies, the trio consistently has bad luck going forward. Paramount Television will produce the series with Netflix, the Hollywood Reporter says.

“I can’t believe it,” Snicket told THR, adding some characteristically dry humor: “After years of providing top-quality entertainment on demand, Netflix is risking its reputation and its success by associating itself with my dismaying and upsetting books.”

[THR]

James Marsh, director of the poignant Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, talks about making a movie with—and about—a living legend

It’s a very good thing director James Marsh isn’t a defeatist. If he were, he would curse the Hollywood calendar that has his compelling biopic of Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything, opening in the same week as Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Interstellar. Ordinarily, an arena-scale spectacle like Interstellar and a bit of cinematic chamber music like Theory wouldn’t have a lot to fear from each other, since their audiences would be decidedly different. But that’s not so this time.

Both movies, in their own ways, wrestle with the same head-spinning questions: the mysteries of the universe and the physics of, well, pretty much everything there is. And both, in their own ways, succeed splendidly. Nolan had the far heavier lift when it came to the sheer scale of the production he was undertaking. But Marsh had the tougher go when it came to making sure his audiences sat still for the tale he wanted to tell, since he didn’t have eye-popping special effects and a thumping score to make the science go down easier. But he plays to that minimalism as a strength, keeping things small, intimate and sometimes brilliantly metaphorical.

On occasion, the facts of Hawking’s own life supplied those metaphors. Even as the great physicist was descending into the black hole of an illness that would render him both immobile and mute, he discovered the phenomenon now known as Hawking radiation, a form of energy that allows information to escape from the gravitational grip of a black hole—a grip so great that it swallows even light. Hawking has spent most of his life finding his own way to get information and ideas out to the world.

And when did the young Hawking have the flash of insight that the eponymous radiation exists? While struggling to free himself from a tangled pajama top that his weakened muscles could no longer negotiate. When life throws a good director a fat, over-the-plate pitch like that, the good director hits it out of the park—and Marsh excels in that moment, as he does with the film as a whole.

Taking a break from both promoting Theory and directing a new project for HBO, Marsh spoke to TIME about getting to know Hawking, working to understand his physics, and turning what could have been a mawkish tale of sickness and survival into a movie that is equal parts drama, wit, love story and ingenious science lesson.

How difficult was it to weave hard cosmological science into a personal story about a man, his marriage and his illness?

I think of myself as a member of the general audience who comes to the movie not overly familiar with cosmology. I pitched the science at a level that I think I would understand, so audiences will too. The movie is really a story of the heart, about two people [Hawking and his wife Jane], and we give them equal screen time. There was a very interesting tension between Hawking’s scientific career on the one hand and his marriage and health on the other. They move in opposite directions, with one soaring as the other is declining. A drama wouldn’t ordinarily be the best way of exploring complex ideas like Hawking radiation, but that balance, that tension made it possible.

Cosmology is that rare science that almost no one understands but almost everyone finds fascinating. Why do you think that’s so?

These are the biggest questions imaginable. Stephen’s work is dealing with the nature of time and the boundaries of the universe. He approaches them through the lens of physics, but what he’s engaging with are the deepest mysteries we can contemplate.

How involved was Hawking in the production?

[Screenwriter] Anthony McCarten spent many years working on a screenplay and talking to Jane Hawking, whose memoir is the source of the movie. We then went to Stephen and he read the script. He wasn’t wildly enthusiastic with the idea but he agreed to cooperate. He offered us some items from his personal collection, including the medal that [his character is seen] wearing at the end of the movie. At each step of the production we involved him, consulted with him. We had a physicist—a former student of his—on the set at all times to make sure all of the equations looked right.

Did Hawking himself ever visit?

During the May Ball shoot [a scene at an outdoor dance], he came to the set with his handlers and other assistants. He was very impressed by the scale of everything, but it raised the stakes a lot when he was there, especially because it was on the same night Jane showed up. Earlier, Jane took us to the house where they lived when they were first married. She showed us the spot where Stephen was saying “I have an idea” when he was struggling with his pajamas and came up with Hawking radiation. Scientists are like filmmakers: they have the oddest ideas at the oddest times.

Did you give Hawking any kind of final approval of the film before it was released?

When it was cut but not finalized, we took the film and showed it to him as a mark of respect. Had he not liked it we would have failed, so that was very nerve-wracking. It seemed to us that he had an emotional reaction while he was watching the movie. His response afterwards was very generous. He said the movie felt ‘broadly true,’ and then he sent the company an e-mail saying that when he watched Eddie [Redmayne, who plays Hawking] perform, it was like watching himself. He also offered us the use of the real electronic voice he uses to communicate to replace the one we were using. It has a weird emotional spectrum and it made the movie better. It felt like an endorsement.

No word on whether, like Spring Breakers, it will also include a Britney Spears singalong

Variety reports that Jamie Foxx and Benicio del Toro will co-star in an “ensemble gangster drama” written and directed by Harmony Korine. The Trap, as it is currently titled, is also billed as a revenge movie, but additional plot details have yet to surface.

In an interview with Bullett in September, Korine said he had finished writing the script and selected Miami as a filming location (“Just the way the sky looks,” he explained). “It’s going to be my most ambitious film,” he offered, “and I’m really just going to go for it. It’s some next level shit.” This says a lot, coming from the filmmaker who gave us Spring Breakers, which is already pretty next-level.

Foxx, meanwhile, will grace the silver screen later this month in Horrible Bosses 2 and in December as Daddy Warbucks reincarnate Will Stacks in the remake of Annie. For his part, Del Toro plays attorney Sauncho Smilax in Paul Thomas Anderson’s highly anticipated adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, also premiering in December.

Korine plans to begin filming The Trap in early 2015.

The X-Men: Days of Future Past star would do the role justice

Danny Boyle’s planned Steve Jobs biopic (based on the book Steve Jobs, by former TIME managing editor Walter Isaacson) has been subject to some turbulence when it comes to the leading role. Which leading man has the right qualities to play one of the most influential business minds of the past century, and more importantly, which one would be willing? Leonardo DiCaprio had been connected with the role and turned it down, and Christian Bale has left the project. But the star Boyle’s looking at now is the perfect fit: If anyone should play Steve Jobs, it should be Michael Fassbender.

The Irish actor is reportedly in “early talks” for the part, and it’s a perfect choice. He effortlessly passes, for instance, what we might call the Kutcher Test: Is the actor serious enough to ensure that the project won’t become an object of derision before anyone sees it? (Ashton Kutcher’s movie Jobs was a laughingstock for much of last year, due in large part to that actor’s Dude, Where’s My Car? pedigree.) Fassbender, who went to the Oscars as a nominee for 12 Years a Slave this year, is certainly in the conversation when it comes to the most accomplished young actors.

But it’s the sort of parts Fassbender is good at playing that particularly qualify him for Jobs. His two franchise roles have proven him uniquely able to convey intellectual power that’s literally superhuman and a certain disregard for the concerns of mortals — as the all-powerful Magneto in the two most recent X-Men flicks, and as David the android in Prometheus. The Jobs of Steve Jobs is both a visionary thinker, naturally, but is more concerned with technological advancement than with human ties. Fassbender’s ability to be supercilious onscreen without becoming loathsome would serve him well, here.

Magneto and David have been two roles that prove Fassbender’s readiness to play Steve Jobs, but neither saddle him with an unwieldy persona. He’s still free to play characters without making it all about him. Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, is almost too famous to play the role; he’s such a major star, and pulls consistently from such a familiar bag of tricks, that he only works in roles that are wildly outsized, like his vampy Wolf of Wall Street character. Fassbender’s been in hits, but his X-Men and Prometheus characters are different from one another, and more different still from his character in, say, 12 Years a Slave. He’s proven he can handle the fundamentals, even changing his appearance for a role (he took his good looks out of the equation, wearing a mask throughout Frank). But perhaps more importantly, Fassbender still bears the exciting potential of an actor we haven’t seen do everything he can.

And that’s part of why he should take the part, too: He deserves it. Fassbender has for years been a fantastic supporting actor in widely watched movies (add Inglourious Basterds to the list that includes X-Men, Prometheus, and 12 Years a Slave) or a leading man in little-seen movies like Shame and Jane Eyre. His ability to build an utterly convincing inner life for a morally complicated character has never been tested by a lead role in a movie as potentially big as Steve Jobs, a movie whose very bigness demands an actor willing to take artistic risks. It’s early yet, but more famous and more widely loved actors leaving the project could be the best thing that happened to the Steve Jobs movie. And if it doesn’t work out, Fassbender’s star-making project is, no doubt, just around the corner.

Christopher Nolan's latest comes out Wednesday in some theaters