Phil Lord Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

EXCLUSIVE: Pen15 co-creator and star Anna Konkle has been tapped as the lead in Amazon Freevee’s Western, a half-hour period comedy pilot from Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios and Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Sony TV-based Lord Miller.

very close to having his entire performance in “The Lego Movie” — along with all live-action scenes — end up on the cutting room floor, the film’s producer, Dan Lin, said Saturday at PGA’s Produced By Conference.Lin recalled the uphill battle that went into the building blocks of the hybrid animated and live-action movie, revealing that Warner Bros. initially wanted to cut the latter chunk of the film that included scenes featuring Ferrell.During a conversation with Chris Miller, who penned the screenplay for the 2014 hit along with writing-producing partner Phil Lord, Lin said the budget demands from the studio forced him to treat the family comedy as an “indie movie.” The Rideback Ranch founder even had to pre-sell the basement set, which featured the human characters, to Legoland as an exhibit to partially fund the movie.

Today on Crew Call, The Afterparty architects Phil Lord and Christopher Miller discuss how they took what was a feature concept at TriStar over ten years ago and turned into a Rashomon comedy series for AppleTV+.

Chris Miller came up with the idea for The Afterparty years ago, when he knew he wanted to create a murder mystery that showed different perspectives from the witnesses. Although the project was put on the back burner as he worked on films like The Lego Movie and 22 Jump Street, the time span allowed Miller to come up with the unique idea of telling the story of each witness in a different genre. The new idea sparked interest from Apple TV+, which ordered an eight-episode series, and the show’s success has led to a second season with 10 episodes.

Mindy Kaling used the Warner Bros Discovery Upfront presentation Wednesday to let everyone know she doesn’t care what you think about her Scooby-Doo animated spinoff Velma on HBO Max. If a dog can solve crimes, she told the crowd, then her Velma “can be brown.”

Ashley Hume Sommer Carbuccia’s time-traveling comedy short “Mac & Cheese” was awarded best film at the 2022 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge Awards. “Mac & Cheese” took home a total of three prizes at the annual event, with Amanda Pinto winning best director and Jake Nathanson scoring best editor.The ceremony returned in-person for the first time in two years on Thursday night at Sony Pictures Studios’ Cary Grant Theater in Los Angeles.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorIFTA (The Independent Film & Television Alliance) announced Tuesday that American Film Market managing director Jonathan Wolf would step down when his term ends on June 30. Wolf has led the AFM for 24 years, and will continue as an advisor for the 2022 AFM, set to return to Santa Monica in person on Nov.

Sasha Urban editorThe 2022 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge Awards announced presenters for this year’s ceremony, including “Special” creator Ryan O’Connell and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller. The awards will be held on May 5 at Sony Pictures Studios’ Cary Grant Theater in Los Angeles.Additional presenters include Paul Raci (“Sound of Metal”), Max Borenstein (“Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”), Blake Stadnik (“This is Us”) and “As We See It” actors Rick Glassman, Sue Ann Pien and Albert Rutecki.Launched in 2014 and created by Nic Novicki, the film challenge gives filmmakers the chance to writer, produce and complete short films that tell unique stories showcasing disability in many forms.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter“The Afterparty” Season 2 at Apple is bringing back Season 1 stars Sam Richardson and Zoë Chao while also adding seven new cast members, Variety has learned.Richardson and Chao join previously announced returning Season 1 star Tiffany Haddish. The new season will revolve around a murder at a wedding.The new cast members are: Zach Woods (“Silicon Valley,” “The Office”) as Edgar; Elizabeth Perkins (“Sharp Objects,” “Weeds”) as Isabel; Poppy Liu (“Dead Ringers,” “Hacks,” “Better Call Saul”) as Grace; Paul Walter Hauser (“Black Bird,” “Cruella”) as Travis; Anna Konkle (“Pen15”) as Hannah; Jack Whitehall (“Travels With My Father,” “Jungle Cruise”) as Sebastian; and Vivian Wu (“Away,” “Dead Pigs”) as Vivian. Created by Chris Miller, each episode of “The Afterparty”  explores a different character’s account of one fateful evening, all told through the lens of popular film genres and unique visuals to match the storyteller’s perspective.Miller and Phil Lord executive produce “The Afterparty” under their Lord Miller banner along with Anthony King. King and Miller will work as co-showrunners on Season 2.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the sequel to 2018’s Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” just got bumped from its original release date of this fall to next summer (June 2, 2023). But the hype train stops for no (spider) man, and at CinemaCon tonight, Sony revealed a work-in-progress preview of the upcoming film.Producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller introduced the first 15 minutes, much of which was presented in storyboard and in-progress animation footage. The film starts in Gwen Stacy’s universe, Earth-65, having an awkward conversation with her police officer father who is hunting down Spider-Woman, unaware that his target is his own daughter.

Sony dropped the first 15 minutes from its upcoming Marvel animated sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – Part I today.

J. Kim Murphy Sony Pictures has updated its upcoming theatrical release calendar, dating its upcoming comic book adaptation “Madame Web,” officially revealing a new entry in Denzel Washington’s “The Equalizer” series and delaying the release of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” to 2023.Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the sequel to 2018’s acclaimed “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” has been bumped to June 2, 2023.

The 2022 Oscar Winners and Nominees

When presenters Halle Bailey, Lily James and Naomi Scott — actresses who starred in live-action remakes of Disney animated films — came out to present the award, the teleprompter script provided for them by the Oscars’ writing staff included remarks on how animated movies are “formative experiences” for kids who watch them “over and over.”“I see some parents who know exactly what we’re talking about,” quipped Scott.

Oscars?That’s the big question as Hollywood prepares to celebrate itself on Sunday. Organizers are taking precautions to prevent the 2022 Academy Awards from being a super-spreader, as other awards shows and film festivals have proven to be in the pandemic era. Attendees will have to show two negative PCR tests and be fully vaccinated in order to attend the festivities.

Isla Fisher (Wolf Like Me) has signed on to star alongside Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Will Forte and Randall Park in Universal’s animated comedy Strays, Deadline can confirm.

IMDb TV, Amazon’s premium free streaming service, has given a formal pilot order to Western, a half-hour period comedy from Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios and Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Sony TV-based Lord Miller.

Lucy Kitada has joined Lord Miller, the production company of Oscar winners Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, as EVP, Film. In this new role, she will find, develop and produce film projects, reporting to President of Film Aditya Sood.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “Maggie,” the Season 1 finale of “The Afterparty,” which debuted on Apple TV Plus on March 4.The stars of “The Afterparty” have been lying to their families.That’s because the comedic whodunnit, which hails from director-showrunner Chris Miller and executive producer Phil Lord, established a strict rule of secrecy from Day 1. But after Friday’s finale revealed the killer to be Ben Schwartz’s Yasper, the cast can finally come clean to their loved ones, and hundreds of Reddit detectives can hang up their investigative hats.“I’ve been semi-playing werewolf with everybody,” Schwartz tells Variety. “I still haven’t told my parents.

Wilson Chapman editor“The Afterparty” on Apple TV Plus is a wildly ambitious storytelling exercise; over the course of its eight episode run, the series’ first season tells the story of a high school reunion that ends in murder in wildly different genres, as the various suspects recount their recollections of the night through the lens of their own worldviews. And in order to successfully embody the different genres, be they rom-com or thriller, the show needs to adapt itself to every episode: a single moment might be romantic one episode or comical the next, through the use of music and editing to change the mood of the scene.The music of “The Afterparty” is composed by Daniel Pemberton, who came to the project after working with creator and director Christopher Miller and executive producer Phil Lord on the critically acclaimed animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” He was attracted to working on the show because of the challenge and complexity of the score, which would require him to alter his musical style nearly every episode.

Apple TV Plus series “The Afterparty” is, by definition, a murder mystery. But it’s also part action-thriller, police procedural, musical, rom-com — oh, and animation.The series follows escape room designer Aniq (Sam Richardson), who earnestly attends his high school reunion hoping for a second chance at love with his old crush Zoë (Zoë Chao), but instead finds himself the primary suspect in a murder when the afterparty goes terribly wrong.

Universal will open their animated dog comedy Strays on Friday, June 9, 2023. The studio already had dibs on the releases date; a weekend they’re sharing with Paramount’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. 

LOS ANGELES -- Ivan Reitman had his army of well-known collaborators but the filmmaker and producer’s influence extended beyond that too, as evidenced by the tributes that poured in at the news of his sudden passing at age 75.Dan Aykroyd, who Reitman has known since his days in television in Toronto, said that the loss of his “friend, collaborator, champion and one of the last creative talents of the big screen era crumples” him. His son, filmmaker Jason Reitman, who took over the “Ghostbusters” franchise last year, wrote on Twitter that he’s “lost his hero.”But Reitman also helped more than few behind the scenes, including filmmakers like Todd Phillips and Phil Lord, who offered their own stories of working with him.———“I’ve lost my hero. All I want is the chance to tell my father one more story.

Netflix’s The Mitchells vs the Machines, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature this morning. Along with Flee, Mitchells is one of only two animated films nominated that aren’t made by Disney.

Caroline Framke Chief TV Critic“The Afterparty” isn’t exactly subtle about its conceit. The new Apple TV Plus comedy opens with Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) telling a room full of suspects that “we’re all stars of our own movie — the same thing could happen, but you see it in a different way.” In order to solve the murder of their obnoxious classmate Xavier (Dave Franco), she says, they’ll each have to tell her their version of how their ill-fated high school reunion went down — or, in an even more blunt line, that she wants to hear their “mind-movie.”Each subsequent episode of “The Afterparty” features a different character retelling the same night in a way that lets creator and director Chris Miller take on a different genre each time.

Judging by the quick teaser and all the hints from producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the upcoming “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is going to have yet another grouping of unique Spider-People who help the young Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen save the world. And if Sony is looking for more folks to add to the film, the studio should give Tom Holland and Co.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor“The Mitchells vs. the Machines” centers around a dysfunctional family battling a Skynet-style robot uprising during a family road trip.And what’s a road trip without stellar tunes? Mark Mothersbaugh served as the composer for the Netflix animated feature, working alongside “The Lego Movie” producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.