Paul Rudd and Jonathan Majors’ Improv Skills Were Key to the Scott and Kang Variant Scenes in ‘Ant-Man 3’

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Kelvin Harrison Jr. spent up to six hours a day playing the violin in preparation for his latest film “Chevalier.” The period drama, set before the French Revolution, follows the life of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, also known as Black Mozart. The Searchlight Pictures film also stars Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo, Marton Csokas, Alex Fitzalan and Minnie Driver. Speaking with Variety, Harrison Jr. said despite being raised in a musical family (his father was a classical musician and a music teacher) he didn’t know about Chevalier. “I had no clue who he was, but he was pretty bold, and I was blown away by him,” he says.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor When Teresa Hsiao (“Family Guy”), Cherry Chevapravatdumrong (“Family Guy”) and Adele Lim (“Crazy Rich Asians”) set out to write “Joy Ride,” the aim was to develop a story that they wished they could have had seen in their twenties. “Joy Ride” sees Lim transition from writer to director in this “Girls Trip” meets “The Hangover” ride of a film where Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola, and Sabrina Wu follow Ashley Park’s Audrey across the world on a business trip to Asia. Things go awry when she has to track down her birth mother to close a huge business deal. The writers wanted a film that would show young Asian women having fun and being messy, smashing past narratives of Asian women as exotic fetishes. This was a story they wanted to tell on their terms.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Lionsgate has released the first trailer for Adele Lim’s “Joy Ride,” a comedy feature starring Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu, Ashley Park, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu. Premiering March 17 at SXSW, the film is set to be released in theaters July 7. “Joy Ride” tells the raunchy and fun story of how four best friends embark on a once-in-a-lifetime international adventure. In the film, Audrey (Park) has to go to Asia on a business trip to close a massive deal. Things go drastically wrong when she searches for her birth mother with her childhood best friend Lolo (Cola), her college friend turned Chinese soap star Kat (Hsu) and Lolo’s eccentric cousin Deadeye (Wu). They also nearly end up in a Chinese jail for doing drugs.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Ruth E. Carter has become the first Black woman to win two Oscars. Carter, who in 2019 became the first Black person to win the Oscar for costume design for her work on Marvel’s “Black Panther,” was recognized for the film’s sequel, “Wakanda Forever.” In her speech, she thanked director Ryan Coogler and asked late “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman to look after her own mother, who recently died at 101. “Nice to see you again,” Carter said as she took the stage. “Thank you to the Academy for recognizing the superhero that is a Black woman. She endure, she loves, she overcomes, she is every woman in this film. She is my mother. This past week, Mable Carter became an ancestor. This film prepared me for this moment. Chadwick, please take care of Mom. Ryan Coogler, Nate Moore, thank you both for your vision. Together, we are reshaping how culture is represented. The Marvel family, Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonso, Louis D’Esposito and their arsenal of genius, thank you. I share this with many dedicated artists whose hands and hearts helped manifest the costumes of Wakanda and Talokan. This is for my mother. She was 101.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Zaib Shaikh, Canada’s Consul General to Los Angeles, hosted the country’s annual Canada at the Oscars soiree Thursday at his official residence in Hancock Park. The event was the first stop of the night for many Oscar-nominated Canadians including “Women Talking’s” Sarah Polley, Sheila McCarthy and Kate Hallet. Polley was headed to the Macro party. Other attendees were going to the Oscar Wilde Awards or the South Asian Excellence Pre-Oscars Celebration. Also in attendance were “Turning Red’s” Domee Shi, who landed an Oscar for best animated feature, Brendan Fraser and “The Whale” prosthetics makeup designer Adrien Morot.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large It all comes down to this weekend. Variety’s Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay, Jenelle Riley and Michael Schneider dissect the Oscar categories one last time and share final predictions on this week’s edition of the award-winning Variety Awards Circuit podcast. It’s a Mega Roundtable of the podcast, as the team goes through every category and offers up their final thoughts. Will “Everything Everywhere All at Once” sweep the night? Or are some surprises in store? Listen along as you fill out your office Oscars pool: Here are some of the potential wins that the team is rooting for:

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor A24’s “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” is an awards season darling. The live-action hybrid stop-motion film recently picked up the Annie Award for indie feature as well as two other awards. Jenny Slate won the voice acting prize for her performance as Marcel while Slate, Dean Fleischer Camp, Nick Paley and Elizabeth Holm won for feature writing. Camp called on animation director Kirsten Lepore to help merge the worlds of animation and live-action. As Oscar voting closes on Tuesday, Camp and Lepore discussed bringing Marcel to life, collaborating and the film’s reception. Kirsten Lepore: I’ve had many texts and calls from friends who said that that was the first movie that their kids had ever seen in a movie theater. It was so wild and an honor.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” currently playing in theaters. The biggest issue “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” visual effects supervisors Jesse James Chisholm and Dave Hodgins had in building the robotic villain M.O.D.O.K. was getting the proportions right. M.O.D.O.K., which stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing, is played by Corey Stoll, the villain from the original “Ant-Man.” As audiences saw at the end of the first movie, his character Darren Cross is microscopically shrunk by Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang, causing massive amounts of damage to his body. He pops up in the third “Ant-Man” movie with a horrifically contorted physique, a giant head and a tiny body. To move, M.O.D.O.K. sits inside a hover chair that doubles as a mechanical suit. “He’s just a massive floating head,” Chisholm says.

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania screenwriter Jeff Loveness has revealed his thoughts on the negative reviews that the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film has received.Following the release of the film, which has seen a sharp decrease in viewership in the box office across the globe in just its second week, Loveness has revealed in an interview with The Daily Beast that he was “surprised” by the film’s negative reception.“To be honest, those reviews took me by surprise,” Loveness said, “I was in a pretty low spot… Those were not good reviews, and I was like, ‘What the… ?'”. He added: “I’m really proud of what I wrote for Jonathan [Majors] and Michelle Pfeiffer (Janet Pym).

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “Elvis” and “Everything Everywhere All At Once” were the film winners at the 2023 Costume Designers Guild Awards. Shirley Kurata’s win comes as “Everything Everywhere All At Once” has garnered momentum heading into the final phase of Oscar voting which begins on March 2. Kurata bested titans in the field going up against Deborah L. Scott (“Avatar: The Way of Water”), history-making Ruth E. Carter (“Black Panther) and Mayes C. Rubeo (“Thor: Love and Thunder”). Catherine Martin won for her work on Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis.” Building over 90 looks alone for Austin Butler, Martin, a triple-nominee for production design and best picture remains a favorite.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Tony-awarding-winning choreographer Sonya Tayeh behind the stage adaptation of “Moulin Rouge!” has joined the creative team of the upcoming “Gatsby” musical. The show’s producers Amanda Ghost, Len Blavatnik, Jordan Roth and American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) also announced that the stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel will have its World Premiere at A.R.T. in 2024. With “Hadestown” alum Rachel Chavkin on board to direct. As previously announced, Florence Welch, the force behind Florence + the Machine will write the lyrics. Welch will be joined by Thomas Bartlett to work on the show’s music.

Not holding back! Evangeline Lilly broke character when she made an NSFW comment to Michael Douglas while filming their new movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.  

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” currently playing in theaters. Over the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there have been several characters pulled from the comic books that have pushed the boundaries of verisimilitude and just common sense, including Rocket and Groot from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Korg and Miek from “Thor: Ragnarok,” Goose from “Captain Marvel” and Morris from “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” None of them, however, hold a candle to M.O.D.O.K. One of Marvel’s earliest characters, created in 1967 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, M.O.D.O.K. — which stands for Mental (or Mobile or Mechanized) Organism Designed Only for Killing — is the nom-de-guerre of a human whose physique was horrifically contorted to give him a giant head and a tiny body. In order to be able to move, M.O.D.O.K. is placed inside a hover-chair that doubles as a mechanical suit, and equips him with all the tools he needs for the aforementioned killing.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points, including the ending, of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” currently playing in theaters. One day in early 2020, Jeff Loveness got a call from his agent telling him to go to the Marvel Studios offices in Burbank by 3 p.m. that day, with no further information. It wasn’t until he walked into the meeting room and saw director Peyton Reed — who’d helmed Marvel’s “Ant-Man” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp” — that Loveness understood that he was there to talk about a third movie starring Paul Rudd’s incredible shrinking superhero. But then Loveness was asked a surprising question: “Do you have a take on Kang the Conqueror?”

WARNING: MAJOR spoilers ahead for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”Kang the Conqueror made his official debut in the MCU with “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” but, as it turns out, it might’ve been a one-and-done situation — at least for that variant. Then again, Marvel fans have come to know the “no body, no certainty” rule at this point, so it’s hard not to wonder if he’s actually gone.

is not only the third in a trilogy of movies from director Peyton Reed but it also officially kicks off Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film starring Paul Rudd as Scott Lang formally introduces Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror and the film franchise's new big bad after he first made a surprise appearance in the season 1 finale of . Kang's presence is expected to be a major presence in the remaining projects of both Phase Five and Phase Six, with presumably being one of the final chapters in that saga.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Receiving the SAG Life Achievement Award on Feb. 26 has a special meaning to Sally Field. “It’s my tribe,” she says of her fellow actors. “It’s the group I most wanted to be respected by and to be included in, and that means a lot to me.” And while she says she has yet to write her speech, that’s understandable — the actor has been busy with promotion for her latest film, “80 for Brady,” now in theaters. Field joins the likes of Robert De Niro, Sidney Poitier and Rita Moreno who have previouslybeen bestowed with the honor. Field spoke about her career, working with Lee Strasberg and being a sports fan with Variety.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Costume designer Ruth E. Carter dedicated her NAACP Image Award win to the late Chadwick Boseman during a luncheon and fashion show, held in honor of the 54th annual awards on Thursday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles. As Carter took to the runway to accept her trophy for outstanding costume design on “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” she used her speech to remembered Boseman, who died in 2020. “It was because of him that we came together and we mourned. We celebrated his life,” Carter told the crowd assembled on the L.A. Live event deck. “We all have him to thank for the motivation, not only of ‘Wakanda Forever,’ but also for the first ‘Black Panther.'”

Todd Gilchrist editor Though she’s 26, Kathryn Newton has been playing a teenager for a long time — perhaps because she does it so well: with early roles in “Bad Teacher” and “Paranormal Activity 4,” she proved she can bring depth and dimension to whatever her character is struggling with, be it a dyspeptic teacher or an otherworldly entity. But after doing comedy (“Blockers”), drama (HBO’s “Big Little Lies”) and sci-fi-tinged mystery, growing up on screen takes on new meaning in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” where — spoiler alert — she gets to participate in the series’ size-changing action as Cassie Lang, the daughter of Scott Lang’s (Paul Rudd) Ant-Man. Newton had previously auditioned for another role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and though she didn’t divulge which one, she tells Variety how that experience paved the way for her to play a character who could become part of the next generation of MCU superheroes.

The Ant-Man numbers are in!