Michel Gondry Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Davide Abbatescianni Oscar-winning filmmaker Michel Gondry presented “The Book of Solutions” at Lucca Comics & Games this week, and took the opportunity to explore his ideas about creativity, and to urge aspiring directors to fight against perfectionism and embrace risk. He was accompanied by his editor, Élise Fievet. Gondry explained that the self-help guide from which the film gets its name features a series of guiding principles for creativity, such as kicking off a project without hesitation, learning by doing, and not listening to others.

Katcy Stephan Missy Elliott is joining Universal Pictures’ untitled Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry musical project. She joins Halle Bailey, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry and Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph in a coming-of-age musical set in Virginia Beach in the summer of 1977 and inspired by the Atlantis Apartments, located in Williams’ childhood neighborhood. Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “The Science of Sleep”) is set to direct the project based on a script by Martin Hynes (“Toy Story 4,” “The Magician’s Elephant”) and Steven Levenson (“Tick, Tick…Boom,” “Fosse/Verdon”).

Grammy-winning hip-hop and R&B artist Missy Elliott has been tapped for a role in director Michel Gondry and producer Pharrell Williams‘ new, untitled feature for Universal Pictures.

Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway) has signed on to star alongside Kelvin Harrison Jr., Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Halle Bailey in Universal’s untitled coming-of-age musical from director Michel Gondry and producer Pharrell Williams.

Halle Bailey is joining Universal Pictures’ untitled Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry movie!

Halle Bailey (The Color Purple) has been tapped to star alongside Kelvin Harrison Jr. and The Holdovers Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph in Universal Pictures‘ untitled coming-of-age pic from director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and producer Pharrell Williams (Hidden Figures), Deadline has learned.

Katcy Stephan Halle Bailey is set to join Universal Pictures’ untitled Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry project. Bailey will co-star opposite Kelvin Harrison Jr. and joins newly-minted Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph in this coming-of-age musical set in the summer of 1977 Virginia Beach inspired by Atlantis Apartments, Williams’ childhood neighborhood.

Mac Miller deep cut that samples the score of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has been made available for the first time on streaming services. The track, ‘The Quest’, had previously only been shared as a bonus track on the 10th anniversary edition of his second album, ‘Watching Movies With The Sound Off’, first released in 2013. ‘The Quest’ interpolates Jon Brion’s soundtrack for the classic 2004 Michel Gondry film, specifically the instrumental track ‘Phone Call’.

Michel Gondry hasn’t worked with a Hollywood studio since the 2011 comedy “The Green Hornet.” But he’ll do so for his follow-up to last year’s “The Book Of Solutions” for what’s arguably the most peculiar project in his filmography. Deadline reports that Gondry heads to Universal to direct an untitled coming-of-age musical set in 1977 Virginia Beach.

EXCLUSIVE: Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves) has been set to lead a new, untitled Universal feature project from director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and producer Pharrell Williams (Hidden Figures), according to multiple sources, who also tell us that 2024 Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) is in talks.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent French director Yann Gozlan is set to reunite with Pierre Niney, the French star of his two most successful movies “Un homme idéal” and “Black Box,” for his next film, “Gourou.” “Gourou” is being co-produced by Wassim Beji at WY Productions, the Paris-based company behind “Black Box and “Un Homme Ideal,” and Niney’s banner Ninety Films. While the plot is currently under wraps, the project is being teased as a deep dive into the world of coaching and follows the rise of a personal development guru who turns out to be toxic. One of France’s most bankable and busiest French actors, Niney won a Cesar Award for his performance as French fashion legend Yves Saint Laurent in Jalil Lespert’s biopic in 2015, and went on to work with Anne Fontaine (“Frantz”) and Michel Gondry (“The Book of Solutions”), among others.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Toronto’s Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, has unveiled the full lineup of films that will screen in its Special Presentations program. The festival runs April 25 to May 5. World premieres include “Red Fever,” which sees Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond travel to the four corners of Turtle Island and across Europe to explore the world’s fascination with Native Americans; “American Cats: The Good, the Bad, and the Cuddly,” in which “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” correspondent Amy Hoggart explores the controversial practice of declawing cats; “The Ride Ahead,” an expansion of co-director Samuel Habib’s short film “My Disability Roadmap” (which got an Honorable Mention in the International Shorts section of Hot Docs in 2022), exploring a typical 21-year-old itching to move out, start a career and find love—all while navigating life with a disability; “Lost in the Shuffle,” which follows world champion magician Shawn Farquhar as he simultaneously devises a new trick and delves into a medieval murder cold case; and “Le Mans 55: The Unauthorized Investigation,” which explores the tragic Le Mans race in 1955 where more than 80 spectators were killed.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Shailene Woodley and Jack Whitehall have joined the cast of the animated feature “Girl in the Clouds,” directed by Philippe Riche (“Rabbids Invasion”). The film, penned by Riche and Luc Bossi, is inspired by the novel “The Little Girl Who Swallowed a Cloud as Big as The Eiffel Tower” by best-selling author Romain Puértolas. Production will start in May 2024 for a Summer 2026 release.

Davide Abbatescianni After two pandemic years and a successful 2022 edition back in full swing, Lucca Comics & Games — Europe’s biggest geek meet, second in size globally only to Tokyo’s Comiket — is set to unspool again in the picturesque Tuscan town from Nov. 1-5.

EXCLUSIVE: Michel Gondry’s Partizan and RTG Features have tapped Christopher Makoto Yogi (I Was a Simple Man) to direct Merv and the Miracles, a feature-length doc that explores the legendary college basketball game between Chaminade and number-one ranked Virginia in 1982.

Film anniversaries are a great way to make someone feel old. Has it really been 20 years since Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation?” Apparently so.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Fresh off the world premiere of her last directorial effort, “Priscilla,” at the Venice Film Festival (where star Cailee Spaeny won best actress), Sofia Coppola joined Rolling Stone to reflect on the 20th anniversary of her beloved “Lost in Translation.” Coppola, whose script for “Lost in Translation” won the Oscar for original screenplay, partly used the dissolution of her marriage to fellow director Spike Jonze as inspiration for the film, which follows a college graduate (Scarlett Johansson) who accompanies her celebrity photographer boyfriend (Giovanni Ribisi) on a trip to Tokyo. While he’s out flirting with a Hollywood actress (Anna Farris), she befriends a faded movie star (Bill Murray) who’s in town to shoot a commercial. Since the film premiered in 2023, viewers have associated Johansson’s character with Coppola and Ribisi’s with Jonze.

Film anniversaries are a great way to make someone feel old. Has it really been 20 years since Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation?” Apparently so.

Diane Garrett Ellen Kuras is having a full-circle moment. The celebrated cinematographer, who has worked for directors including Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, wanted to be a politically minded filmmaker like Costa-Gavras when she was starting out, but found herself primarily working behind the camera for many years. With “Lee,” a Toronto premiere starring Kate Winslet as famed World War II photographer Lee Miller, she is finally making her debut as a feature film director.

It’s been a while since Michel Gondry‘s last film: eight years, in fact.

Sporting a grey WGA-branded “strike” t-shirt, writer-director Charlie Kaufman led a packed-out masterclass this morning in the main hall of the Bosnian Cultural Center at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Veteran indie producer Ted Hope opened Locarno’s industry symposium Thursday afternoon with a provocative keynote during which he declared: “The indie film system is fucked.”

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman is set to be honored with the Sarajevo Film Festival’s career achievement Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award during the festival’s upcoming 29th edition.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman will receive the honorary Heart of Sarajevo award at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival, in recognition of his contribution to the art of filmmaking. The festival will also hold an open-air screening of 2002’s “Adaptation,” which was written by Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze.

The Chemical Brothers have released a new single ‘Live Again’, and shared details of their first book Paused In Cosmic Reflection.Announced earlier today (June 28), the single is described as the “perfect Chemical Brothers track”, and harnesses the same signature elements the group captured in fan favourites including ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’ and ‘Galvanise’.“‘Live Again’ begins simply with a descending, filtered riff and a pair of contrasting vocal lines – one razor spliced to pieces and reconstructed, the other an angel’s sigh,” reads the press description of the single. “And then it all kicks off.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic When we meet Ben Grady (Grant Rosenmeyer), he can barely lift himself out of the living room chair. By the end of this lo-fi indie drama, he’s soaring among the clouds like some kind of schlubby superhero — or one of those kids from “Chronicle” — having mastered what “The Secret Art of Human Flight” calls … well, you heard the title. Maybe not “mastered” exactly, but Ben’s finally getting the hang of it, and that’s exhilarating, since flying couldn’t be farther from the state we found him in earlier, wallowing in melancholy after the unexpected death of his wife Sarah (Reina Hardesty). As presented by director H.P. Mendoza, Ben and Sarah were practically the cutest couple you could imagine. They published children’s books together and made video diaries for their followers on TikTok, which Ben insisted they turn into a kind of insurance policy so that each spouse would have something to watch after the other one passed away. Sarah played along, to a point, though neither party was prepared for her to die all of a sudden at age 31. Now Ben is left with his grief, a hard drive full of videos and not much idea how to move on in his life … until he decides that teaching himself to fly will be his path to healing.

Prior to the release of his latest film, “The Book of Solutions,” it had been eight years since we’ve seen a feature from Michel Gondry. However, it appears the filmmaker isn’t going to wait that long before his next film.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If you’ve ever wondered when it was that Michel Gondry, the gifted French director of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” became the world’s most annoying filmmaker, you might say the answer is, “He always was.” Yet no one, including me, quite thinks of him that way. That’s because the few works of his that have come to prominence possess a special combination of facility and charm. I adore “Eternal Sunshine,” a virtuoso movie that bends your brain and breaks your heart at the same time. You might simply choose to characterize it as the masterpiece of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, but the truth is that Gondry directed it ­— the leaps in time, the emotionally convulsive performances of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet — with a masterful sense of play and gravitational control.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The colorful world of Michel Gondry, the Oscar-winning writer-director of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” is the subject of an upcoming feature documentary represented worldwide by Reservoir Docs. Directed by François Nemeta, “Michel Gondry: Do it Yourself” is an 80-minute documentary shedding light on Gondry’s “inventive and unusual creative process,” from his first video clips to the shooting of his latest movie “The Book of Solutions” which recently opened at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight. “Michel Gondry: Do it Yourself” is produced by Olivier de Bannes at O2B Films, and Robin Acard at The Red Ceiling, and is co-produced by ARTE France.

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, filmmaker Michel Gondry debuted his first feature film since 2015’s “Microbe & Gasoline,” titled “The Book of Solutions.” So far, the film has earned rave reviews (including our own) and looks to be one of Gondry’s most vital films in quite some time.