{"id":58234,"date":"2025-08-04T18:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/58234\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T18:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:10:08","slug":"james-l-brooks-directs-emma-mackey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/58234\/","title":{"rendered":"James L. Brooks Directs Emma Mackey"},"content":{"rendered":"

James L. Brooks<\/a> is finally back directing, exactly 15 years after his last film<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Brooks returns<\/a> with \u201cElla McCay<\/a>\u201d after 2010\u2019s \u201cHow Do You Know.\u201d The Academy Award-winning writer\/director helms the original film, which stars Emma Mackey<\/a> as a lawyer spanning years of her life. Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a> plays her supportive aunt, while Woody Harrelson is Ella\u2019s (Mackey) wayward father, and Rebecca Hall is her late mother.<\/p>\n

Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani, Ayo Edebiri, Spike Fearn, Julie Kavner, Becky Ann Baker, Joey Brooks, and Albert Brooks also star. <\/p>\n

The logline for \u201cElla McCay\u201d reads: \u201cAn idealistic young woman juggles her family and work life in a comedy about the people you love and how to survive them.\u201d The film is also set in 2008.<\/p>\n

\"'Shelby<\/a> \"THE<\/a> <\/p>\n

Brooks told The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>\u00a0that he wanted \u201cElla McCay\u201d to capture the excitement of politics in the early 2000s. \u201cThe film is set in 2008, before we had this enormous division,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason for that, and it\u2019s because it\u2019s not about that. The picture is about how to not make government service and political office something any sane person would flee from. In a movie like this, you\u2019ve got to figure out what the heroism is, and chase that. What is it really that makes you a fine person? Is it a character that\u2019s worth supporting for an entire movie? That\u2019s what you aim for.\u201d <\/p>\n

Brooks added that he cast Mackey as the lead after watching her \u201cbrilliant\u201d performance in the series \u201cSex Education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in an audition process for a long time. I went to London, and very late in the game she turned up, and that was it,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cIn my mind, I pictured the kind of heroines that we had in the \u201950s and \u201960s, early Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell. There\u2019s a certain kind of great movie star we used to have, and Emma has a lot of those same qualities.\u201d <\/p>\n

He continued that Mackey\u2019s co-star Curtis has an \u201cinfectious\u201d spirit and grounded the ensemble. \u201cShe brings a humanity, moment to moment. When the making of a picture can become snarky, Jamie is just a wall against that,\u201d he said. \u201cAlso, it helps that she has the best hug in town.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cElla McCay\u201d is produced by Brooks, Richard Sakai, Julie Ansell, and Jennifer Brooks. <\/p>\n

20th Century Studios will premiere \u201cElla McCay\u201d in theaters December 12. Check out the trailer below. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James L. Brooks is finally back directing, exactly 15 years after his last film. Brooks returns with \u201cElla…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[43857,43858,88,2695,43859,20055,206,9552],"class_list":["post-58234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ella-mccay","tag-emma-mackey","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-james-l-brooks","tag-jamie-lee-curtis","tag-movies","tag-trailers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}