
Ava DuVernay with sitting Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden while making 14th.
Ava DuVernay took the spotlight in the British capital on Monday, appearing on stage for a Screen Talk during the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), which runs through Oct. 18, to discuss her career, her latest documentary, 14th, and the state of Hollywood. The filmmaker was showered with love and adoration by appreciative fans.
Asked how producers could finance films like hers, she shared that crowdfunding is a key opportunity to explore. “You put your movie up there, and there are all kinds of apps and sites that allow people who are like-minded to do it,” DuVernay said. “But [it’s about] also just asking people, getting 20 people investing $5,000 — a nice amount of money to say something or make something. And there are ways to get that money back, whether it’s through taking the film around to different film festivals or YouTubing it or selling it. This is what we’re going back to.”
DuVernay then highlighted how alternative ways of financing independent and other films will become more important. “Hollywood is over,” she argued. “Did you guys hear? It’s done. They’re buying each other, they’re collapsing. It’s all changed. They’re selling studio lots. The idea of going to Sundance and getting a three-picture deal from Harvey Weinstein? He’s in prison.”
Concluded DuVernay: “Everything has changed over the last 10 years, even since I’ve been making [movies and TV shows]. … It’s all: What do we do now? What can we build now that’s new, that serves more kinds of people and kinds of stories?” And she shared that more and more, it will be about artists and audiences connecting directly without a middle man or company that brings them together.
Asked what keeps her going and making political films, the creative pointed to alarm and urgency about the possible further erosions of democratic and human rights, pointing to the fear that President Donald Trump and ICE have caused in the United States. 14th shows “how we got to a place where MAGA can be in power,” she said.
How does DuVernay stay hopeful? “History is the key,” she shared. “I just think that there have been worse times than this. My ancestors and people before me, even 15 years ago, went through much tougher times.”
She continued: “This film saved me in a lot of ways. … The rage that I feel and the fear that I feel, I was really being able to pour it into 14th every day. I only finished the film two weeks ago, and so I really don’t know what I’m going to do from here.”
The Emmy-, BAFTA-, Peabody- and other award-winning writer, director and producer discussed her career, including her latest doc, Netflix’s 14th, which puts Trump administration policies (including efforts to end or restrict the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship) in a disturbing historical context.
She described 14th as a look at “how we got to a place where MAGA can be in power.”
How does she stay hopeful? “Well, history is the key,” DuVernay shared. “I just think that there have been worse times than this. My ancestors and people before me, even 15 years ago, went through much tougher times.”
“She has created seven television series, including the acclaimed When They See Us and history-making Queen Sugar,” the LFF noted in teasing DuVernay’s appearance. “In the cinema, Ava DuVernay has proven as comfortable directing beloved family adventures, such as the magical A Wrinkle in Time, as she has searing portraits of U.S. history, which include Selma and Origin. Her documentary 13th asked who gets caged; her new film 14th, screening in the festival, asks who gets counted.”

Ava DuVernay with sitting Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden while making 14th.
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EXCLUSIVE: Catherine Laga’aia, star of Disney’s live-action Moana, and Deacon Phillippe (Brother Save Us) are set to star in Spaceship Earth, the new Disney+ pilot inspired by the Disney World EPCOT attraction of the same name.
Character details are being kept under wraps. The project, announced in August, hails from Jason Fuchs (IT: Welcome To Derry), Michael Waldron (Loki) and 20th Television.
In Spaceship Earth, when a mission to avert an imminent global cataclysm goes awry, a small band of teenagers from Earth’s past and future must join forces to confront a threat as vast and mysterious as time itself.
Fuchs and Waldron wrote the pilot, with Fuchs serving as showrunner and exec producing via Five Ten Productions. Waldron is also exec producing, along with pilot director Lee Toland Krieger, Adam Fishbach of Fishbach Productions, and Adam Fasullo of Anomaly Pictures.
Laga’aia landed the title role opposite Dwayne Johnson in Moana following a worldwide casting search; the film released to over $323M in worldwide grosses this summer. Previously, the Australian actress co-starred in Prime Video’s limited series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. Next year, she’ll be seen leading the thriller Crashout from filmmaker Nick Annas. She is repped by CAA, Venture Entertainment Partners, The Agency at AIPA, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.
Phillippe is currently in production on Better Than the Movies, an anticipated Netflix rom-com based on the bestselling YA novel by Lynn Painter. Previously, he wrapped his first leading role in Brother Save Us, an indie drama from Jesse Behrenwald. Also to be seen coming up in Frankie Shaw’s Miramax flick 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank, he is repped by CAA, LBI Entertainment, and Ziffren Brittenham.
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Cynthia Erivo knows when to say “yes” and “no” to roles, and she hopes her new film will cause a debate about how the word “no” is received in human relationships and society.
That was one of the takeaways from the star’s jam-packed Monday Screen Talk during the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), which runs through Oct. 18.
In a wide-ranging chat, the Emmy, Tony and two-time Grammy winner and three-time Academy Award nominee discussed her career, including her latest film, Prima Facie, in which she plays a lawyer who becomes a rape victim. Erivo previously told THR that the work on the film would make her “feel sick and angry.”
The star hopes that the film can help start a debate about “preconceived notions about how Black women particularly experience pain” and consent more generally, along with how we hear and accept a “no” in a broader sense. “We expect more violence for her to feel the pain. We expect her to be more in pain than we see,” Erivo shared. “And hopefully, when people watch this movie, you will understand that it’s a violent act.”
She also said: “Consent is sometimes hard for all of us to comprehend. That it’s a big complex thing that is more to do with the way we receive ‘no’ than the way we see a ‘yes.’ Now we can have a conversation about that more than about the rape. It really is about the consent and the way her lack of consent is received.”
During her appearance, Erivo also lauded the intimacy coordinator and her co-star Daniel Ings. About Ings she said that he, “from the beginning, was very, very kind and immediately wanted to have a conversation about how we could be protective of one another and how we could be helpful in those places, at those moments, so that we could go as far as we needed to go, and then come back again.”
And she argued: “I think not enough credit is given to intimacy coordinators. They’re often given a hard time for the work that they have to do on the set. But the work that they do is really important, and it isn’t just about choreographing a scene, a sex scene, a love scene, romantic scene — it’s about sometimes having to not just choreograph these really hard, harrowing scenes but also making sure that everybody comes back to their bodies safely.”
Erivo on Monday also mentioned sharing a “no” quite regularly when she is offered roles, highlighting: “I feel like I have an internal metronome that tells me when something is right for me, and when something is not.” As a result, “I say no to a lot of things,” the actress explained.
When portraying real people, she said she is “playing these women who brought wonderful things into the world, probably because I care about these women very deeply, and I want the world to see them as they were — in all their complexity and all their greatness, and some of their failings, because they’re human. What I love about these women, I guess, is the deep humanity that each of them holds and carries.”
When Erivo was approached about Prima Facie, “I just knew immediately that I wanted to do this because I knew how important it was,” the star recalled. “I also I had this feeling that it was more important than I was even aware of, and I wanted to be part of it.”
With her production company, she is looking to tell complex stories with complex characters, including vehicles for great young actors. Erivo mentioned, for example; that she wants to find something interesting for Demi Singleton.
Questioned about her own mentors, she shared that Michelle Yeoh is among the great stars who are checking in with her and “looking out for me.” Erivo even recalled, to audience laughter, that Yeoh asked her in between Wicked scenes when she would direct for the first time. And she shared: “She asks me the question every time I see her.”
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The third and final installment of the WandaVision universe, VisionQuest, will focus on Paul Bettany’s synthetic superhero.
First introduced cinematically in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Vision was created by placing J.A.R.V.I.S. (also voiced by Paul Bettany) into a Vibranium body that villain Ultron (James Spader) intended to inhabit, with the help of the Mind Stone.
VisionQuest will see him return following the events of WandaVision, which picked up after the character’s tragic death in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) when Thanos killed him to complete his gauntlet with the Mind Stone.
Find release rollout details for Marvel’s VisionQuest below:
When does VisionQuest come out?
Marvel’s VisionQuest arrives on the small screen Wednesday, October 14.
How many episodes are in VisionQuest? Will new episodes arrive weekly or all at once?
There will be eight episodes in the latest MCU television installment. It will premiere with the first two episodes, and release two episodes per week for the following two weeks before the penultimate episode and finale arrive one per week in November. See the full release rollout, complete with episode titles, below:
What is VisionQuest about?
Rebooted and hiding out after escaping those who aimed to use him as a weapon, Vision searches for purpose by consulting F.R.I.D.A.Y., E.D.I.T.H., J.A.R.V.I.S. and Ultron, all of the AI personas embedded into his programming. A bounty placed on his head threatens his existence lying low and sends him on the run with the mysterious Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica), who might be Vision’s son reincarnate and brother to Joe Locke’s Billy Maximoff, formerly Billy Kaplan. Vision must get to the root of Thomas’ identity while resisting Ultron’s influence, evading capture and confronting his true nature.
Who is in the cast of VisionQuest?
Joining Bettany, Mollica and Spader are Todd Stashwick as the morally grey mercenary anti-hero Paladin as well as Faran Tahir, who reprises the role of Raza, Ten Rings leader from Iron Man (2008). Deadline has also confirmed that Lauren Morais and Diane Morgan have joined the cast, which also includes Orla Brady, Polly Frame, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, with Emily Hampshire and James D’Arcy.
We hear Morais will play Lisa Molinari, a character closely connected to Ruaridh Mollica’s Thomas Shepherd, and Morgan is playing an associate of Stashwick’s character, Paladin.
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