{"id":518377,"date":"2026-04-07T22:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518377\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T22:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:07:12","slug":"david-lowery-based-mother-mary-on-taylor-swift-reputation-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518377\/","title":{"rendered":"David Lowery Based Mother Mary On Taylor Swift Reputation Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

You could never accuse David Lowery of being one-note. The filmmaker began his career with a riff on Bonnie and Clyde in Ain\u2019t Them Bodies Saints<\/a>, and has since given us arthouse spookfests (A Ghost Story<\/a>), Earthy-toned Disney remakes (Pete\u2019s Dragon<\/a>, Peter Pan & Wendy<\/a>), and existential epic fantasies (The Green Knight<\/a>). Oh, and he directed episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew<\/a> too. Next up? He\u2019s going full pop star psychodrama in Mother Mary<\/a>, starring Anne Hathaway as a legendary pop icon, reconnecting with Michaela Coel\u2019s mysterious dressmaker after they parted ways years previously.<\/p>\n

The film boasts true pop cred, with songs penned by Charli XCX, super-producer Jack Antonoff, and fka twigs \u2013 but it doesn\u2019t stop there. To craft a genuine pop spectacle, Lowery found himself in his Taylor Swift era. \u201cHer Reputation concert film is one of the best concert films ever. It’s truly phenomenal. And for our concert sequences we looked at that repeatedly,\u201d he tells Empire. \u201cYou would not believe the amount of time we were talking about Taylor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swift\u2019s 2018 tour proved pivotal in helping Lowery and his collaborators figure out how to put on a Mother Mary production within tight budgetary constraints. \u201cWe took three songs from Reputation and broke it down, shot by shot, and looked at them like, \u2018Okay, if we were doing these, how much would these shots cost to do in visual effects?\u2019,\u201d he explains. \u201cWe used that as a budgeting tool, because we didn’t know how to wrap our heads around actually pulling off a stadium concert-show on a minimal budget. We were literally using Reputation as a guide. I can go on about Reputation all day.\u201d Baby, let the games begin.<\/p>\n

The spirit of Taylor lived on through the Mother Mary shoot and beyond. \u201cWhen we wrapped, Annie [Hathaway] gave me a Taylor Swift style beaded bracelet with \u2018Anti-Hero\u2019 on it,\u201d reveals Lowery, adding that they both went to see the Eras Tour<\/a> in Europe. \u201cI definitely brought a lot of Taylor Swift to the table in terms of who Mother Mary was. I would often would be like, \u2018Imagine Taylor Swift in ten or 15 years \u2013 that\u2019s sort of who this character could be.\u2019\u201d Mother Mary is coming. Are you ready for it?<\/p>\n

\"Empire<\/p>\n

Read Empire\u2019s Mother Mary feature in the Steven Spielberg issue<\/a> \u2013 on sale Thursday April 9. Pre-order a copy online here<\/a>. Mother Mary comes to UK cinemas on April 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You could never accuse David Lowery of being one-note. The filmmaker began his career with a riff on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-518377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}