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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Deadline\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWelcome to the latest edition of The Weekend Read \u2014 Deadline\u2019s curated collection of the long-form stories you might have missed during the week. <\/p>\n
\n\tRead our digital cover story in which Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren discuss their marital madness in Guy Ritchie\u2019s series MobLand. <\/p>\n
\n\tThen we have our review of Ebenezer, which sees Johnny Depp\u2019s return as the titular Scrooge character and an interview with the filmmakers behind the documentary Kikuyu Land, which explores the devastating impact of historical land theft in Kenya. <\/p>\n
\n\tPlus, we sat down with the young breakout actress Molly McCann from The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, and from Polish festival Toru\u0144Camerimage, we talk \u201980s pop culture and Easter Island with the cinematographers behind Project Hail Mary and Wild Horse Nine.<\/p>\n
\n\tClick on the links below to find out more.<\/p>\n
\tCover Story: Pierce Brosnan & Helen Mirren Talk \u2018MobLand\u2019 Marriage<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Deadline\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAs her MobLand<\/a> character Maeve Harrigan, she\u2019s already (probably) been dropping antifreeze in her beloved hubby Conrad\u2019s tea and, so far in the show, we\u2019ve seen best friends bumped off, the couple\u2019s eldest son chain-sawed to death and, in the Season 2 premiere<\/a>, a full-on massacre at the dog track. This couple are, shall we say, complicated.<\/p>\n \n\tNow, Mirren swoops in with her (actually fake) knife and rather un-murderously uses it to cut the (also fake) Sunday roast on the table. She and Brosnan are so in sync, such a perfectly dead-pan double act, that everyone in the room breaks into laughter. After all, it\u2019s something special to be in the presence of acting royalty \u2014 Dame Mirren, who, among many epic roles, played Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, and Pierce Brosnan, the actual former 007<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tRead the digital cover story here<\/a><\/p>\n \tThe \u2018Ebenezer\u2019 Review<\/p>\n \t\t\t \n\tThere have been countless iterations on the Charles Dickens yuletide classic, \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d which was first birthed to the world as a novella in 1843, but has been a favorite of Hollywood for nearly a century. Actors have warmed to the bah humbug of it all in various takes beginning with Reginald Owen in 1938\u2019s A Christmas Carol to perhaps still the best, Alastair Sim in the 1951 version. George C. Scott and Patrick Stewart did well-regarded TV movies. Bill Murray did a contemporary comedic version with Scrooged. Albert Finney turned it all into a big screen musical in 1970. Even Kermit and Miss Piggy jumped on board with The Muppet Christmas Carol, and no less than Mr. Magoo in the evergreen (and personal favorite) Mr. Magoo\u2019s Christmas Carol. In 2017 Christopher Plummer even took a whirl with Scrooge in the clever and wonderful biopic, The Man Who Invented Christmas which was all about Dickens writing the time honored tale.<\/p>\n \n\tRead the full review here<\/a><\/p>\n \tKenyan Land Theft In \u2018Kikuyu Land\u2019<\/p>\n \t\t\t \n\tThe legacy of colonialism comes at a tremendous cost to protagonists of the award-winning documentary Kikuyu Land.<\/p>\n \n\tTake Mr. Mungai, for instance, whose family owned land in Kenya\u2019s tea highlands that was seized by the British when they ruled the country. The land\u2019s value today: in the billions of dollars. The film, which screened Tuesday evening as part of Deadline\u2019s For the Love of Docs virtual event series, follows Mr. Mungai as he pursues a legal battle to get back the magnificent acreage, now controlled by multinational corporations.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI met Mr. Mungai through [Joseph] NJenga\u2026 our other producer,\u201d Bea Wangondu, who directed Kikuyu Land with Andrew H. Brown, explained during a discussion after the screening. \u201cAnd the introduction was, \u2018Come and meet this man who\u2019s got all this paperwork, evidence [of land theft] that he\u2019s collected over eight years,\u2019 and we just clicked. He\u2019s an amazing human being. He\u2019s now a dad to me\u2026 We are very close.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRead the full interview here<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u2018The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping\u2019 Breakout Molly McCann<\/p>\n \t\t\t \n\tMolly McCann<\/a> has a lot to be excited about. The 15-year-old Irish actress has already built up a roster of credits including Bad Sisters and 2020 Sundance hit title Herself, but now she\u2019s gearing up for her biggest project to date with The Hunger Games<\/a>: Sunrise on the Reaping, Lionsgate<\/a>\u2019s latest return to Suzanne Collins\u2019 hugely popular dystopian universe.<\/p>\n \n\tMcCann plays Louella McCoy, one of the female tributes from District 12 and a close ally of Haymitch, in a story set some 24 years before Katniss Everdeen\u2019s story, the character famously played by Jennifer Lawrence more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n \n\tRead the interview here<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u2018Project Hail Mary\u2019s Cinematographer Greig Fraser On \u201980s Pop Culture Influences<\/p>\n \t\t\t \n\tOscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser<\/a> took time out of shooting Sam Mendes\u2019 The Beatles films to reflect on how he and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller crafted the visuals for summer box office hit Project Hail Mary<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tFraser spoke to Deadline during the Toru\u0144Camerimage Film Festival<\/a> and said that working with Lord and Miller had been a long time in the making.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ve known Phil and Christopher for a while in passing but we hadn\u2019t worked together yet until this film,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat I love about them is that there is definitely a thread that runs through their films but genre-wise, they are completely different in everything they do. They are like these savants that just keep flicking between different formats and ratios and stories but there is an underlying theme in their work. What I think is beautiful about their work is that we all grew up on the same films and he same cartoons and we are all influenced by the same series of things.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRead the interview here<\/a><\/p>\n \tHow \u2018Wild Horse Nine\u2019 Cinematographer Ben Davis Captured Easter Island<\/p>\n \t\t\t \n\tBritish cinematographer Ben Davis<\/a> has just wrapped shooting Bradley Cooper\u2019s Ocean\u2019s Eleven prequel when he touches down at the Toru\u0144Camerimage Film Festival in Poland to discuss Wild Horse Nine<\/a>, his latest film with writer-director Martin McDonagh<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe film, which is the fourth collaboration between Davis and McDonagh, stars Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich and is shot on the remote shores of Easter Island, some 2,330 miles west of mainland Chile.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019d been to Easter Island before in 1999 to shoot a one or two-minute piece about the millennium that we shot there for some reason,\u201d Davis tells Deadline. \u201cSo, I kind of knew the place. It\u2019s an extraordinary place. It\u2019s very odd, but very beautiful. There aren\u2019t words really to describe it. It\u2019s quite spiritual and it\u2019s sort of this deforested island with these [Moai] heads just looking out to the ocean. You\u2019re surrounded by an endless horizon in every direction, but it has this idea that you have immense space and isolation, which is obviously what attracted Martin to it as he likes to isolate his characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Paramount Pictures\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy Trifilm Studios\/The Bea Company\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Lia Toby\/Getty Images for Lionsgate UK\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Amazon MGM\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Searchlight Pictures \/ Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n