
Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro at the One Night Only premiere on Monday.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Universal Pictures
Mike Stenson, the erstwhile president of Jerry Bruckheimer Films who helped usher films from Top Gun: Maverick (his final film) to Coyote Ugly over his 25-year tenure, died at the age of 65 on April 26.
A cause of death was not revealed.
“As early as high school, Mike loved movies and knew he wanted to make them,” his younger brother Robert said in a statement. “While he achieved great personal success, he always shunned the spotlight preferring to highlight the contributions of others. Despite his success, he remained down to earth with an intellect matched only by his generosity and rapier wit.”
Bruckheimer said: “Mike was one of the most brilliant individuals I’ve ever known or worked with. His sense of story and complete knowledge of film production from development through filming and beyond was just amazing. Mike’s relationships with talent on both sides of the camera was legendary. I can’t express enough how much I will miss him, and what a huge loss this is to me, everyone who worked with Mike through the years, and of course, his family.”
Born April 29, 1960 and raised in Boston, Stenson graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in business administration. He jumpstarted his career as a production assistant in New York and worked for two years in independent film and television as an assistant director and production manager before returning to Boston to complete his education.
Following graduation, he moved to Los Angeles where he began his tenure at Walt Disney Studios in special projects for two years before moving into the production department at Hollywood Pictures as a creative executive. Thereafter, he was promoted to vice president and later EVP during his eight years with the company, overseeing development and production for Hollywood Pictures and Touchstone Pictures.
While at the House of Mouse, many tried to poach Stenson but did not succeed until 1998, whereupon he joined Bruckheimer Films as leader, supervising all aspects of film development and production.
The respected motion picture executive served as a producer on Bad Company and Gone in 60 Seconds, and as an executive producer on a spate of films: Glory Road, King Arthur, Veronica Guerin, Kangaroo Jack, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, Remember the Titans, Déjà Vu, Confessions of a Shopaholic, G-Force, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Lone Ranger, Deliver Us From Evil, 12 Strong, Gemini Man, as well as the National Treasure, Bad Boys and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises.
In addition to the many Bruckheimer films he helped bring to the silver screen, Stenson also developed several other films and nurtured them through production, including Rush Hour; Instinct; Six Days, Seven Nights; and Mr. Holland’s Opus.
Stenson is survived by several members of his loving family, including his brothers John and his wife Mary; Tom and his wife Mary; Robert and his wife Kristin Callaghan; and his nieces and nephews Kaitlin, Christopher, Elizabeth, Jack, Grace, Aidan and Keira.
A funeral mass will be held at Manhattan Beach’s American Martyrs Catholic Church on Wednesday, May 20 at 2:00 pm. There will be a reception to follow.
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Ever since the official trailer dropped for the Callum Turner–Monica Barbaro rom-com One Night Only, quickly racking up millions of views on its way to its nearly 40 million total, internet commentators have had a lot of questions about the film’s central premise in which premarital sex is illegal apart from one 12-hour period a year.
How is this law enforced? Are people breaking the law? How did this legislation pass? What counts as “sex” under this new mandate? Are marriage (and divorce) rates skyrocketing? What about affairs?
Rest assured: Some of those questions are answered in the movie, and explanations are starting to trickle out online for those unconcerned about spoilers. Beyond that, One Night Only writer, Travis Braun, who saw his screenplay top the 2024 Black List, has answers, but they’re not all in the Will Gluck-directed Universal movie now in theaters.
“I set out to write a movie about the circus that is modern dating, and I thought how fun if we could set that all in one night, and I have answers to those questions, and some of them are in the movie,” Braun told The Hollywood Reporter at the One Night Only premiere earlier this week in New York.
Braun said he definitely thought about the specific rules of the film’s alternate reality, framed as three years on from the no-sex act being passed, but didn’t want to get too deep into the politics of the world of the movie.
“There’s a big mythology that I’ve built out and then as you develop a movie you start to pare down and you go: What does an audience really care about, and what are they showing up to see? For me the answer is always a love story, romance,” he told THR. “I hope they can come in and we’ll show them how this world functions, and then they can just enjoy the movie and have fun. The whole focus of this was love story and romance first, and the world-building obviously has to make sense and has to be there, but ultimately we weren’t interested in getting into the politics of it. We wanted to tell a story about these two incredible people trying to find love on this crazy night.”
Producer Jacqueline Monetta, who brought Braun’s script to Gluck, said they didn’t want moviegoers to have all of the answers.
“I had a million questions. I was like, ‘What does this mean? What does this world look like? How do people communicate? What’s different?’ And that’s I think what’s so smart about it,” she said of One Night Only‘s “big idea, high-concept” premise. “We don’t answer every question in the movie, purposefully, because we want those questions to be had on the car ride home. We want people to keep talking about it and really think about what would this mean for our world, what does it mean for our world now. But I think Will and I were really specific on what questions we wanted to answer.”
In a recent Reddit AMA, Gluck also detailed how he and his team approached the world building of the movie while not wanting it to be all about the mandate and offered prospective moviegoers hints for where to find the answers to their questions.
“We spent a lot of time talking about the rules of the world, and if you’ve seen the movie, or when you see the movie, you’ll see that the rules of the world and the world building are all in the background,” he said. “It’s on TVs, signage, in thrown-away lines, because we didn’t want to give the world short shrift, but we didn’t want the movie to be about that. It’s another way I want people to see this. If they see it more than once, they’ll pick up so many more rules of the world in the background. A lot of the questions that I’ve been getting after people have seen the movie are actually answered in the movie, which is by design because I want people maybe not to know them. So, yes, it was a tricky tightrope to have them there, but not for the movie to be about it.”
Turner meanwhile echoes Braun’s advice for curious prospective moviegoers: “Go see the film!”
“You’ll realize pretty quickly what the realm is that you’re working within and it’s a comedy,” Turner says of what inquisitive filmgoers will find. “There are no great political undertones, I don’t think. This is just a place where you can escape for an hour and a half, two hours and enjoy and laugh your head off.”
One Night Only is now in theaters.

Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro at the One Night Only premiere on Monday.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Universal Pictures
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Although the live-action remake of Moana hasn’t quite been able to catch a wave at the box office, Dwayne Johnson is proud of what they made.
The Golden Globe nominee said the Disney movie’s negative reviews, which currently sit at 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, are “just the way it goes” in the entertainment industry, and what “really mattered” was that “the culture really stood up” in the Polynesian-inspired tale.
“Our first two reviews came out. I’ll never forget it… They were amazing. I was like, wow,” he told People, noting the reviews then “went another way, as sometimes happens.”
“That’s just the way it goes because we’re in this business,” added Johnson.
A decade after he voiced the demigod Maui in Disney’s animated film Moana, Johnson reprised the role in the Thomas Kail-helmed live-action adaptation.

“The challenge was, okay, let’s remember, though, what’s going to be beyond this opening weekend. Let’s remember what’s happening right now and the noise that’s happening right now,” said Johnson. “If you love it, great. If you don’t, no problem.”
Following Moana‘s July 10 premiere, the movie has gone on to make $266M at the global box office. Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro addressed the low turnout in a letter to shareholders.
“Even when our franchise films don’t meet our box office expectations, as with The Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana, our investments in these core properties fuel other parts of our company,” said D’Amaro, noting that Moana is “expected to be a strong title on Disney+, building on the success of the original film, which is one of the most streamed movies of all time.”
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While One Night Only is intended as a romantic-comedy, there are some obvious dystopian undertones that audiences can’t ignore.
Director Will Gluck recently addressed online comparisons between the Purge franchise and his new Universal rom-com, which is now in theaters, about two New Yorkers (Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner) who meet on the one night a year premarital sex is legal.
“I am very aware of the online discourse about this world and this movie being the ‘sex Purge,’ and rightfully so,” he told SlashFilm. “But I don’t want this movie to be about that. And I know I get some blowback going, ‘How could you make a movie about this not being about that?’ Because I love exploring characters and situations.
Gluck added, “Whenever us humans get put in situations, no matter how or why the situation happens, we still have to be humans and get through the day. And that’s what interests me. So we didn’t want it to overwhelm. We wanted to explain it. We didn’t want to take a side. We wanted to show both sides, but we wanted it to be about these two people going through this crazy night.”
With five movies and a TV series expanding on the universe since The Purge premiered in 2013, the Blumhouse franchise is set in an alternate reality where all crime, including murder, is legal one night a year for 12 hours.

In a similarly dystopian fascist universe, albeit with a much lighter mood, One Night Only follows recently dumped pizzeria owner Owen (Turner) and singer Allie (Barbaro) meet on the one night of the year premarital sex is legal under the United States’ “chastity mandate.”
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