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    Netflix Wanted ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Margot Robbie Wanted a Theatrical Release.

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    In the end, Ms. Robbie got what she wanted, signing a deal with Warner Bros.In the latest Hollywood movie bidding war, the battle between a theatrical and a streaming release could not have been more stark.And in this case, theaters won out.The project is an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” seen through the warped mind of Emerald Fennell, the writer and director whose previous projects, “Promising Young Woman” and last year’s “Saltburn,” were viral, transgressive hits. The film will star Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi from “Saltburn” as the rageful Heathcliff. Based on Ms. Fennell’s past work, the R-rated film promises to be sexy, gothic and excessively modern.Netflix was willing to pay $150 million to have it.But Ms. Robbie, who is producing the film with her husband, Tom Ackerley, and their business partner Josey McNamara, wanted to maintain her track record of making movies for traditional studios that put them into theaters. Think “Barbie 2.0” with less pink and much more sex.Ms. Robbie’s company and its partner, MRC, an independent studio, have instead been won over by Warner Bros., the studio said on Thursday. The company offered them around $80 million plus a significant marketing commitment, according to a person with knowledge of the decision. (It helps that her company, LuckyChap, also has a multiyear first-look deal with the studio.)“From the moment we were introduced to Emerald’s vision for the film, and with an incredible cast led by Margot and Jacob, we were instantly committed to forging a partnership with this team to ensure the movie was brought to theaters around the world,” Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, co-chairs of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, said in a statement.The decision to go with Warner Bros. is a blow to Netflix. Getting the film would have been viewed as a feather in the cap of the company’s new film chief, Dan Lin.Yet Mr. Lin found himself up against the same restrictions as his predecessor: his boss’s reluctance to take films to theaters to appease filmmakers, most of whom want their films to debut on the big screen before heading to a streaming service.Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive of Netflix, restated his uninterest in theatrical releases just last week during his earnings call. “I’m just going to reiterate we are in the subscription entertainment business,” he said before adding, “I’m sure that we can continue to pierce the zeitgeist and have those moments in the culture, even when those moments begin on Netflix.”Ms. Robbie is one of the few A-list stars who have not starred in a film released by a streaming service. The actress, who headlined “Barbie” and produced it, has seen her power in Hollywood only rise on the back that film, which was the highest-grossing film of 2023. “Wuthering Heights” will be her next film, and production is set to begin in the first quarter of next year. More

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      What Songs Would ‘Saltburn’ Characters Have Spun in 2007?

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      The soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s movie has been a talker. Hear tracks by M.I.A., Girl Talk, Nelly Furtado and others that would have been a good fit.“Saltburn” has catapulted the 2001 song “Murder on the Dancefloor” back to the charts, but there’s a lot more to discuss about the film’s soundtrack.Chiabella James/Amazon StudiosDear listeners,Over the weekend, I finally watched “Saltburn,” the provocative, polarizing and occasionally downright icky coming-of-age thriller that no one can stop talking about right now.The movie, written and directed by the “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell and starring the current It Boys Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, charts the fates of two unlikely friends who meet at Oxford and later spend a debauched summer at the titular estate where the (much) wealthier of the two boys lives with his aristocratic family.“Saltburn” plays out like a diabolically dark, millennial take on “Brideshead Revisited.” And the operative word there is millennial, since the 38-year-old Fennell delights in planting innumerable period-specific details — including an evocative soundtrack — that remind viewers that these boys belong to the Class of 2006.The soundtrack has elicited such potent nostalgia that it has catapulted Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 neo-disco hit, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” used in a crucial scene, back into the Top 10 on the British charts. This week, the song cracked the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time.Fennell has confirmed that most of the movie takes place in summer 2007, and ever since, armchair script supervisors on social media have made a sport out of pointing out the film’s most chronologically questionable cultural references. (For example: Some of the characters are watching a DVD of “Superbad,” which was still only out in theaters that summer.)The most egregious music cue is a karaoke scene featuring Flo Rida’s party anthem “Low,” which was released in October 2007 and didn’t become a global smash until early 2008. Eagle-eared listeners have also pointed out that an Arcade Fire song released in mid-2007 plays in a pub scene meant to take place near the beginning of the 2006 school year, and that MGMT’s “Time to Pretend,” the song that’s the soundtrack to a languid summer 2007 montage, appeared on an album that didn’t come out until that fall. (The movie’s music supervisor has responded, “It’s as close as possible, really, just to put you back in that space. If it had been a couple of years later, that would have been an absolute no.”)Still, ever since watching the movie, I’ve become obsessed with these quibbles and consumed with one question: What would the characters in “Saltburn” have actually been listening to in summer 2007? Today’s playlist is my attempt to answer that.I am not a professional music supervisor, nor am I member of the king’s nobility — I’m not even British. But I do have credentials that make me exceptionally qualified to create this particular playlist: In the summer of 2007, I was a rising junior in college with a nearly full 160GB iPod.I consulted a number of primary sources, including a playlist on said iPod that I actually created at the end of the year “Saltburn” takes place (titled, with undergraduate melodrama and for reasons I now truly do not recall, “2007 Was a Bad Year”). It features a few artists whose music does appear in “Saltburn” (MGMT, Bloc Party) and quite a few whose songs do not, but whose sounds I think would have potently conjured the era (M.I.A., Hot Chip, that auteur of the aughts sound Timbaland). It is probably not as quintessentially British as the film’s actual soundtrack, but alas, I did not go to uni, I went to “college.”As you can probably already tell, I had way too much fun putting this playlist together. You may call this sound “indie sleaze,” but I just call it my early 20s.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. MGMT: “Time to Pretend”Hilariously, or perhaps just fittingly, the first song on my actual 2007 iPod playlist is a song that was prominently featured in “Saltburn.” Few albums were debated as hotly around my college radio station office that year as MGMT’s glam-pop debut, “Oracular Spectacular.” While it technically wasn’t released until Oct. 2, this song is such a perfect, montage-ready encapsulation of that era’s sound that I will permit Fennell a little poetic license with this one. (Listen on YouTube)2. Spoon: “Don’t You Evah”Another one from my 2007 iPod playlist, from another album I played a lot that summer: Spoon’s effortlessly tuneful sixth album, “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.” I can picture the elegantly wasted denizens of Saltburn vibing to this bass line. (Listen on YouTube)3. Johnny Boy: “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”Any 2007 playlist worth its salt had to have at least one semi-obscure, critically adored indie-pop track downloaded from a music blog. This 2006 should-have-been-smash from the short-lived British duo Johnny Boy checks that box, with flair. (Listen on YouTube)4. M.I.A.: “Boyz”It was also the summer of “Kala,” M.I.A.’s bold, blown-out sophomore album, which I think still stands as her greatest achievement. Though “Kala” was not released until early August, this exuberant single came out in June, setting the season’s tone. (Listen on YouTube)5. Hot Chip: “Boy From School”I actually cannot believe this song was not used in “Saltburn”: The title says it all! Though released in 2006, the British electro-pop group Hot Chip’s moody dance floor anthem would still have been getting plenty of play the following summer, especially in Britain, where it peaked at No. 40 on the singles chart. (Listen on YouTube)6. Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland: “SexyBack”Another 2006 banger that would have still been ubiquitous the following summer, the Timbaland-produced “SexyBack” was released at the height of Justin Timberlake’s commercial popularity and his poptimist-approved hipster cred. (Listen on YouTube)7. Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone: “Ridin’”This is the song I would have put in place of “Low”: another instantly recognizable, era-defining hip-hop track, but one that would have by then been out for long enough that an out-of-touch bloke could have credibly mangled it at karaoke. (Listen on YouTube)8. Nelly Furtado: “Maneater”It was simply not a party in the summer of 2007 until someone put on “Maneater,” the sublime and slightly hipper alternative to Furtado’s other 2006 single about a lascivious woman. (Listen on YouTube)9. Bloc Party: “Banquet”Of course there was song from the post-punk revivalists Bloc Party’s 2005 debut, “Silent Alarm,” in “Saltburn”; I just would have chose this more propulsive and admittedly on-the-nose selection instead of “This Modern Love.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Girl Talk: “Bounce That”And finally, nothing said “college party in the mid-to-late-aughts” like a cut from Girl Talk’s 2006 hyperactive mash-up opus, “Night Ripper” — or maybe just someone stealing the aux cord and playing the entire album from start to finish. (Listen on YouTube)Take ’em to the chorus,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“2007: The Summer of ‘Saltburn’” track listTrack 1: MGMT, “Time to Pretend”Track 2: Spoon, “Don’t You Evah”Track 3: Johnny Boy, “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”Track 4: M.I.A., “Boyz”Track 5: Hot Chip, “Boy From School”Track 6: Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland, “SexyBack”Track 7: Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone, “Ridin’”Track 8: Nelly Furtado, “Maneater”Track 9: Bloc Party, “Banquet”Track 10: Girl Talk, “Bounce That”Bonus TracksAfter I featured the British musician and poet Labi Siffre in Friday’s newsletter, a Times editor sent me a link to Siffre’s exquisitely funky 1975 song “I Got The …” — which is prominently sampled in Eminem’s star-making 1999 single, “My Name Is.” I admit that this kind of blew my mind. It also led me to two fascinating facts I’d like to share with you.First, that Beck and his producers the Dust Brothers were planning to sample “I Got The …” on a single from the 1999 album “Midnite Vultures,” but Eminem beat him to it. (What could have been!) Also, even more impressively, Siffre refused to clear the Eminem sample for the producer Dr. Dre until they removed all lyrics that Siffre had deemed homophobic. “Diss the bigots not their victims,” Siffre said years later in an interview. “I denied sample rights till that lazy writing was removed.” If only every Eminem song had undergone the Labi Siffre test! More

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      ‘Saltburn Review’: Lust, Envy and Toxic Elitism

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      In the new film from Emerald Fennell, Barry Keoghan plays an Oxford student drawn into a world of lust and envy at a classmate’s estate.“Saltburn” is the sort of embarrassment you’ll put up with for 75 minutes. But not for 127. It’s too desperate, too confused, too pleased with its petty shocks to rile anything you’d recognize as genuine excitement. This thing was written and directed by Emerald Fennell, whose previous movie was “Promising Young Woman,” a horror flick about rape that was also a revenge comedy. So believe me: She wants you riled. Fennell’s seen the erotic thrillers, studied her Hitchcock and possibly read her Patricia Highsmith, and gets that if you name your main character Oliver Quick he’s obligated to do something at least arguably Dickensian. The question here, amid all the lying, lazing about and (eventually, inevitably) dying, is to what end?We’re dragged back to 2006, where two boys at Oxford — bookish Oliver (Barry Keoghan) and rakish Felix (Jacob Elordi) — forge one of those imbalanced, obsessive friendships that one of them mistakes for love and the other tolerates because he’s needier than he looks. It goes south or sideways or to outer space but also nowhere. Well, that’s not entirely accurate, since it also goes, for one summer, to Saltburn, Felix’s family’s estate, a grassy expanse that boasts a Baroque mansion with stratospheric ceilings, one cantilevered staircase, copious portraiture, a Bernard Palissy ceramic platter collection and one of those garden mazes where characters get lost right along with plots.These two meet, in earnest, when Oliver loans Felix his bike, a moment Oliver’s been waiting for. The best scenes in the movie happen during this Oxford stretch when Oliver experiences Felix as an intoxicant, and Felix’s prepster coterie experiences Oliver as an irritant. There’s some crackle and dreaminess and post-adolescent instability here. Identities are being forged. It’s been better elsewhere — John Hughes, “Heathers,” Hogwarts, Elordi’s HBO show “Euphoria.” But Fennell squeezes some hunger, cruelty and passable tenderness onto these moments. When Oliver tells Felix his father’s just died, Felix extends his Saltburn invitation out of sincere compassion.Now, what happens over the course of this visit amounts to a different movie — or maybe three. Lust and envy take over. As does Fennell’s tedious, crude stab at psychopathology. Felix hails from one of those stiff, pathologically blasé clans where “clenched” counts as an emotion. Everybody at Saltburn seems ready for a new toy. And Oliver’s A-student impulses make a sport of ingratiation. His erudition, availability and blue eyes impress Felix’s droll mother, Elspeth (Rosamund Pike); his mere arrival arouses Felix’s self-conscious zombie of a sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver). In a different movie, their enthusiasm for this newcomer would make you sad for Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), a schoolmate and old pal of Felix who’s already on the premises, practically a member of the family and flatulent with attitude by the time Oliver shows up. He’s the one nonwhite major character in “Saltburn,” a fact the movie considers doing something intriguing with but abandons. His eyebrows are just chronically Up to Something. Is Farleigh worried about losing a financial lifeline? Is he jealous that Oliver might consummate things with Felix before he does?But this isn’t a movie in which anybody’s reaction to new developments is straightforward — and not because there’s anything complex or psychological going on with the screenwriting or the performances (Richard E. Grant pumps Felix’s father full of drollery). It’s because Fennell is more drawn to — or maybe just better at — styling and stunts than she is the tougher work of emotional trenchancy. If she gives us one music-video bit (a montage, a whole tracking shot), she must give us half a dozen. When the time comes for the movie to make its switch to gothic mischief, it’s like watching the first half of “Psycho” turn into the video for “When Doves Cry” or George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90.” What’s that look like? Well: Oliver sneaks a peek as Felix masturbates in a tub, and once the coast is clear he bends over and sips the draining bathwater. It’s a fine shot that’s also an absurd thing to have this guy do. Which is how you know the movie is failing as a good work of trash. I didn’t laugh or gape. I just sat there watching an actor do his damnedest to save the rest of the movie before it heads down the drain. Fennell keeps going, though, turning her mild protagonist into someone ripe for the cover of a bodice-ripper: a crafty virgin discovers the lethal weapon of lust.This was the gist of “Promising Young Woman,” too: that sex was like a chain saw or a gun. When it landed in 2020, the moment seemed right. Fennell had found a way to turn a premise you’d propose at a dinner party or while tipsy in the back of a cab into something tight and mordant: a “rape culture” revenge-o-matic. But it was so morally and formally tidy that it punched its own teeth out. The “o-matic” won. “Saltburn” has the same seductive sleekness — the nerve. But none of the dread or poison kick.The film’s comic centerpiece was also the star of Fennell’s other movie: Carey Mulligan. Here, she’s deadpanning her way through a chicly ratty mess named Pamela. Mulligan does blinkered, stammering and sad like if Tama Janowitz had written Miss Havisham first. It’s just Helena Bonham-Carter karaoke. But the movie needs it. Pamela has maybe three actual scenes, then we never see her again. She’s overstayed her welcome at Saltburn. But the movie misses the campiness Mulligan’s giving. You’d like to see her and Pike try on the vulgar farce of “Absolutely Fabulous.” But Fennell is going for real opulence, not a comedy of it.If “Promising Young Woman” had feminist vengeance on its mind, what’s “Saltburn” thinking? I spy three hovering text dots. It’s got some twists and a handful of good lines (nearly all of them belong to Pike), but it doesn’t have many thoughts and even fewer feelings. Here is a movie where gay things occur, but homosexuality abuts, alas, corruption and conniving.I suppose Fennell has made a movie about toxic elitism, but she’s done it in the way Ikea gives you assembly instructions. And barely even that, since the most blatant class indictment is outsourced to the Pet Shop Boys’ “Rent” during a bout of actual karaoke with Oliver and Farleigh. Staging the warfare between two strivers isn’t a bad urge, but that doesn’t go far enough, either. The movie does for “posh” what “Soul Plane” did for “ghetto”: luxuriate in what it’s pretending to blow up.I’m even left doubting Fennell’s expertise in main characters. Are we meant to clock a nerd who, when he sheds the clothes and spectacles, makes you as horny as Felix is supposed to make him? Barry Keoghan is trying to create a role out of the disparate parts of other ones (Norman Bates, Tom Ripley, Patrick Bateman), yet doesn’t get all the way there. He couldn’t have. There is no “there.”The whole movie seems to exist for its coda, and presumably the prosthetics designer whose name appears in the closing credits. It’s another music-video fantasia, but so cynical, literal-minded and literally cheeky that I cringed my way through it. And it asks a lot of Keoghan, who could have built a memorable, original character for Fennell. But real acting is not what Fennell’s after here. Oliver has a decent amount of strategic sex and Keoghan does his share of nudity, but the only pornographic thing about the movie is the house.SaltburnRated R. Throw a rock. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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      What Would Strikes Do to Oscar Season?

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      The delay of some big titles, like “Dune: Part Two,” has ramifications for coming releases like “May December” and “Killers of the Flower Moon.”Three years after the pandemic forced the majority of Oscar season to take place on Zoom, Hollywood may be facing another circumscribed awards circuit.Dual strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America have already had a significant effect on this year’s movie calendar: Studios have opted to push several big theatrical releases like “Dune: Part Two” to 2024, since SAG-AFTRA is prohibiting its members from promoting major-studio films amid the walkout. That same ban could radically reshape the Oscar season landscape, since awards shows and the media-blitz ecosystem built around them depend on star wattage to survive. (The strikes have already prompted the Emmys to move from September to January, and other ceremonies could be delayed, too.)So what will the season look like if the strikes continue into late fall or winter? Expect these four predictions to come to pass.Streamers will be at a major advantage.The post-pandemic theatrical landscape is already difficult enough for prestige titles: Last year, best-picture nominees “The Fabelmans,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Tár” and “Women Talking” all struggled to break out at the box office. Subtract the months of press that the stars of contending films are called upon to do, and the financial forecast for specialty films grows even more dire. If striking actors aren’t available to promote this season’s year-end titles, many studios will think twice about releasing them.Streamers don’t have the same problem, since they worry more about clicks than box office numbers. So far, Netflix, Apple and Amazon have been proceeding full speed ahead with their awards-season slates: Though the actors in streaming films like “Nyad” (with Annette Bening as the long-distance swimmer); “Saltburn” (a thriller about obsession); and “Killers of the Flower Moon” (a historical drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio) may not be free to do much press, there’s ultimately no more effective advertisement for a streamer than simply throwing big pictures of a movie star on the app’s home page.Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Because of the strike, they can’t promote the film.Apple TV+, via Associated PressDirectors are the new stars.The monthslong awards circuit can raise a filmmaker’s profile considerably: Near the end of their seasons, auteurs like Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) and Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) were as recognizable as movie stars, and often just as mobbed at awards shows. Still, if the actors strike continues for several more months, studios will need to rely even more on their directors, since they may be the sole representatives of their films who are available for big profiles, audience Q. and A.s and ceremonies.Well-established auteurs like Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”) will be at a particular advantage here, as will new-school academy favorites like Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”) and Emerald Fennell (“Saltburn”). The latter two have a significant side hustle as actors, which may prove appealing in a season that will lack thespian faces, though their fellow actor-turned-director Bradley Cooper will be in a bit of a bind: How can he promote “Maestro,” his forthcoming Leonard Bernstein movie, if he also stars in it?‘Barbenheimer’ could rule again.The dual release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” proved to be the cinematic event of the summer, as Gerwig’s doll comedy broke box-office records and Nolan’s biopic defied the doldrums that have recently plagued prestige dramas. Both films were already poised to be major awards contenders, but the decimation of the year-end theatrical calendar will only reinforce their dominance.For old-school voters who still prefer to support theatrical releases instead of streaming films, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” might as well be running unopposed. The punt of “Dune: Part Two” to 2024 will only further help those two films’ awards cases, as the craft categories where the first “Dune” dominated — like production design, sound, editing and visual effects — are now decidedly up for grabs.“Barbie” may have an advantage with Oscar voters who prefer to support films released in theaters.Warner Bros.Up-and-coming actors may miss out on breakthroughs.Awards season can sometimes feel like a glamorous grind, requiring stars to commit to months of near-constant interviews, actor round tables, audience Q. and A.s, and hotel-ballroom hobnobs. Still, the season is invaluable when it comes to raising an actor’s profile. Up-and-comers become A-listers through their sheer ubiquity, and some of this season’s rising stars will miss out on the career glow-up that’s possible from a prolonged awards press tour: I’m thinking of people like “May December” actor Charles Melton, who nearly steals the movie from its leading ladies, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore (who play an actress and a Mary Kay Letourneau-like teacher, respectively).Though it would be a fine line to walk, it’s possible that some of the smaller studios may seek interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA that would allow actors to do Oscar-season press. For example, A24 has secured interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA to continue shooting films since it is not among the studios the guilds are striking against. Could the company secure a similar carve-out that would allow the cast of its summer hit “Past Lives” to become awards-show fixtures? If the strikes continue and no such arrangements are possible, Oscar voters may be forced into an unprecedented position: Without all the usual noise that surrounds an awards contender, they’ll simply have to decide whether to nominate a performance based on its merit alone. What a concept! More

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      ‘Bad Cinderella’ to Close on Broadway, Ending Lloyd Webber’s Streak

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      When it concludes on June 4, an unbroken string of Andrew Lloyd Webber shows since 1979 will come to an end. His latest opened only in March.“Bad Cinderella,” a revisionist riff on the classic fairy tale, will close on June 4, bringing to an end, at least for the time being, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 43-year-long streak of shows on Broadway.The latest musical, which opened March 23, was not the pinnacle of that career — it was greeted on Broadway by hostile reviews, garnered zero Tony nominations and struggled at the box office. Last week it played to houses that were only 54 percent full and grossed just $326,303, which made it the lowest-grossing musical on Broadway.It had fared slightly better in London, and not just because “bad” was not part of the title there — critics had looked on it more favorably when it opened in the West End after multiple pandemic-related delays, but it had only a modest run and a closing clouded by the way the cast was informed and some of the words Lloyd Webber used to describe the turn of events.The musical is, like most Cinderella stories, about a shabbily treated young woman whose fortunes change when she meets a prince. The twists, in this production, are that the protagonist is rebellious, Prince Charming is gay, and beauty standards are oppressive.In addition to music by Lloyd Webber, who is best known as the wildly successful composer of hit musicals like “Cats,” “Evita” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” the musical features a book created by Emerald Fennell (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Promising Young Woman”) and then adapted by the playwright Alexis Scheer (“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord”), and lyrics by David Zippel (who won a Tony years ago for writing the lyrics for “City of Angels”). “Bad Cinderella” is directed by Laurence Connor, who previously enjoyed more success directing Lloyd Webber’s 2015 musical, “School of Rock.”“Bad Cinderella” was capitalized for up to $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped. The musical’s lead producer is Christine Schwarzman, a lawyer; together she and her husband, the Blackstone billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, are major players in New York financial and philanthropic circles. Christine Schwarzman has become increasingly active as a producer on Broadway through her production company, No Guarantees; she is also a lead producer of “Fat Ham,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in drama and is nominated for the best play Tony Award.At the time of its closing, “Bad Cinderella” will have played 33 preview performances and 85 regular performances. More

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      ‘Bad Cinderella’ Review: The Title Warned Us

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      Andrew Lloyd Webber hopes to extend an unbroken 43-year streak on Broadway. But his 13th new musical may not be the charm.First: Bring earplugs.Not just because the songs in “Bad Cinderella,” the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, are so crushingly loud. The dialogue, too, would benefit from inaudibility.For that matter, bring eye plugs: The sets and costumes are as loud as the songs. If there were such a thing as soul plugs, I’d recommend them as well.That’s because “Bad Cinderella” is not the clever, high-spirited revamp you might have expected, casting contemporary fairy dust on the classic story of love and slippers. It has none of the grit of the Grimm tale, the sweetness of the Disney movie or the grace (let alone the melodic delight) of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Instead, it’s surprisingly vulgar, sexed-up and dumbed-down: a parade of hustling women in bustiers and shirtless pec-rippling hunks.Finally, a Cinderella for streetwalkers and gym rats!That this is the supposedly improved version of the musical that opened in London in August 2021 beggars the imagination. Then simply called “Cinderella,” and welcomed with indulgent warmth by critics who were perhaps rusty after more than a year of lockdown, it has here acquired the adjective “Bad,” as if to dare headline writers with an easy mark. A more accurate adjective might have been “Unnecessary” — except perhaps for Lloyd Webber himself, whose unbroken 43-year streak of shows on Broadway, beginning with “Evita” in 1979, would otherwise end with the closing of “The Phantom of the Opera” in April.Yet if there was no good reason for “Bad Cinderella,” that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been good. Quite a few recent and incoming musicals — “& Juliet,” “Once Upon a One More Time” and “Six” among them — have more or less reasonably applied a feminist spin to pre-feminist tales and history.Grace McLean as the Queen with a bevy of shirtless pec-rippling hunks.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Bad Cinderella” seems as if it could have been in the same league. Emerald Fennell (original story and book) and Alexis Scheer (book adaptation) have rejiggered the traditional plot to give Cinderella (Linedy Genao) a better motive for marrying Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson) than mere infatuation; he’s already her friend instead of a stranger she meets at a ball. Her transformation from a “gutter rose” and a “rebel” to a silver-leafed stunner, with the help of a godmother (Christina Acosta Robinson) who’s more of a mad aesthetician than a fairy, is not for him, we are told, but herself.Despite that, and a series of effortful numbers Genao sings bravely, her story, which is almost entirely internal, recedes. Sebastian’s is more interesting. An unassuming, enlightened type, he has been dragooned into choosing a bride only because his brawnier and better-loved brother, Prince Charming, is presumed dead after disappearing at war. With both his mother (Grace McLean) and Cinderella’s stepmother (Carolee Carmello) devising other plans for him — the dreaded stepsisters, here hideous Valley Girls — Sebastian’s problem isn’t figuring out whom to marry (he wants Cinderella) but how.Those changes are hardly groundbreaking, especially coming from Fennell, who won an Oscar for writing the feminist revenge thriller “Promising Young Woman,” and Scheer, whose play “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” took a cudgel to stereotypes of innocent girlhood. Still, they ought to have been sufficient to make “Bad Cinderella” at least a winky hoot.One reason it isn’t is the unrelievedly pompous direction by Laurence Connor. Aside from those strident sets and costumes (by Gabriela Tylesova) and that aggressive sound (by Gareth Owen), there is a fundamental mismatch between the flippant fairy tale tone of the book, which wants the lightest possible treatment, and the exhaustingly one-note insistence of the staging. (The choreography is by JoAnn M. Hunter.) As in his work on the Broadway revivals of “Les Misèrables” in 2014 and “Miss Saigon” in 2017, Connor seems to favor busy, murky, late-Reagan-era oversell, not necessarily inappropriate to those late-Reagan-era shows but lacking the delicacy necessary for much that came after.Carolee Carmello, center, as Cinderella’s stepmother, with the dreaded stepsisters, played by Morgan Higgins, far left, and Sami Gayle. Genao is at right.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlso lacking delicacy: the songs, with workmanlike lyrics by David Zippel, and music by Lloyd Webber that often sounds like it escaped from “Phantom.” The prettiest, if most bombastic, is “Only You, Lonely You” for Sebastian, which has the engine-in-overdrive feeling of “The Music of the Night,” complete with triple-crème melody and sludgy orchestrations (also by Lloyd Webber).But “Phantom” was a show about obsession, so its richness and hysteria made sense. If anything, “Bad Cinderella” is about plotting how to “marry for love” (the title of a song in the second act) and thus requires a much lighter touch. In only one number, “I Know You,” which McLean and especially Carmello turn into the show’s comic highlight, do Lloyd Webber and Zippel hit the mark.Whether the mark is worth hitting is another matter; a comic duet that pits aging, carping viragos against each other in the manner of “Bosom Buddies” from “Mame” is not perhaps a feminist anthem. At least there are jokes to land: “I must admit I never quite forget a face/Though every feature’s in a slightly different place.” But mostly when aiming for drollery, the songwriters overshoot and wind up at operetta.Well, “Phantom” was at bottom an operetta too, yet even in an obsolete genre has run on Broadway for 35 years. If “Bad Cinderella” does not seem likely to match that success, its virtues, however invisible to me, may yet be measurable by other means.Keep in mind that Lloyd Webber’s 12 previous Broadway musicals, starting with “Jesus Christ Superstar” in 1971, have run up a total of 30,000 performances, nearly 75 years’ worth. (And he has just turned 75 himself.) What the shows have grossed in New York City — $1.4 billion for “Phantom” alone — could finance a moon mission, or pay off thousands of mortgages for employees and send their children to college.Lloyd Webber, not only British but a Lord, has been, in that sense, America’s most successful theater composer. We can argue that “Evita” wasn’t good for the culture — and “Cats” not good for anything — but somehow, he and Broadway made a match that’s lasted like no other. Even without the blessing of critics, and just like “Bad Cinderella,” it’s an implausible story about a real marriage of love.Bad CinderellaAt Imperial Theater, Manhattan; badcinderellabroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. More

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      Review: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Delayed ‘Cinderella’ Is Worth the Wait

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      After months of pandemic-mandated postponements, the British composer’s new show finally had its premiere. It’s fun.LONDON — “Cinderella” finally got there, albeit well past midnight. Five weeks after the show’s aborted July 14 premiere, and with numerous other dates offered and then dropped along the way, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical at last opened here Wednesday at the Gillian Lynne Theater.And, guess what? The long-awaited show from the 73-year-old industry veteran turns out to have been worth the wait. “Cinderella” is a big, colorful production, painted in deliberately broad brushstrokes by the director Laurence Connor, that turns a time-honored story (somewhat) on its head. The result may not be quite the theatrical equivalent of its heroine’s cut-glass slipper, but it nonetheless looks set for a sturdy West End run. Best of all: “Cinderella” is fun.Lloyd Webber has been unusually visible of late as a newly minted activist, making headlines here throughout the pandemic to score points against the British government and demand that theaters be allowed to open; this musical is on more familiar territory. Cinderella, a societal outcast, is a bit like the rejected Phantom in “The Phantom of the Opera,” and that show’s mask gets a visual reference toward the end of “Cinderella’s” first act, when the scraggly-haired, dowdy-looking “scullery wench” (Carrie Hope Fletcher) of the title is given a beauteous makeover. She finds herself in the care of a Godmother (Gloria Onitiri), who would seem to be a dab hand at plastic surgery, and within minutes Cinderella is covering her face as part of the treatment.Her inevitable prince, too, turns out not to be the Prince Charming of legend, who is reported missing at the show’s start, but his shy and gawky younger brother, Sebastian (the sweet-faced Ivano Turco, only a year out of drama school). Cinderella’s childhood friend and lover-in-waiting, Sebastian could as well be the young Joseph from “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” if that earlier musical’s cheerfully asexual hero had been allowed a libido. (“Joseph” and “Phantom” are both back up and running in the West End.)Ivano Turco (Prince Sebastian) and Rebecca Trehearn (the Queen).Tristram KentonThe score tilts heavily toward the power ballads that tumble from this composer’s pen; one or two could be trimmed to the benefit of an overlong production. The aggressive number “Bad Cinderella” early on establishes the gifted Fletcher’s clarion-voiced rebel as a troublemaker amid the manicured environs of the show’s “picturesque” French setting, where everyone is devoted to beauty and physical perfection. (That would explain the frequent emergence among the townsfolk of various muscled, bare-chested men, apparently on loan from a Chippendales revue.)Sebastian gets an earworm number of his own in the emotive “Only You, Lonely You,” which ends with the same sort of money note as “Love Changes Everything,” from Lloyd Webber’s “Aspects of Love.” Elsewhere, in a second-act waltz, we clock nods toward Rodgers and Hammerstein, who wrote their own “Cinderella,” and, separately, to Edward Elgar at his most ceremonially British; a showstopping duet, “I Know You,” for the Queen and the Stepmother, by contrast, has a more Gallic tinge.Those supporting roles are played to comic perfection by Rebecca Trehearn and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt: A florid Hamilton-Barritt, in particular, vamps across Gabriela Tylesova’s elegantly shifting sets like an Edward Gorey figure who has had too much to drink. Trehearn, for her part, raises haughtiness to a high art: “I can’t lose my head,” she announces. “Where would all my hats go?”Here, as elsewhere, you feel the enlivening touch of a collaborative team that includes Tony-winner David Zippel (“City of Angels”) whose lyrics rhyme “nondescript” with “ripped” while also accommodating the story’s swoony romanticism. The notably bawdy book is by Emerald Fennell, an Oscar-winner this year for her script for “Promising Young Woman,” who springs several narrative surprises along the way — an important one will be immediately clear to those who read the cast list. (And surely her appearance in “The Crown” as Camilla Parker Bowles equipped Fennell for a musical that features its own royal wedding.)Carrie Hope Fletcher as Cinderella with Victoria Hamilton-Barritt, second from right, as the Stepmother, and Laura Baldwin and Georgina Castle as the stepsisters.Tristram KentonIn keeping with other musicals like “Wicked,” to which “Cinderella” owes an evident debt, the emphasis here is on learning to love and trust your inner beauty, rather than seeking approval elsewhere. In context, it’s no accident that Cinderella tells Sebastian, in a moment of mock petulance, “I can’t help being a legend,” before coming to realize that she might actually deserve that exalted status.I doubt “Cinderella” itself will ever be a show of legend, but its fairy-tale rewrite feels like a happy corrective to grim times: Cinderella arrives at the ball, by which point the audience has had one, as well.CinderellaAt the Gillian Lynne Theater, in London; andrewlloydwebberscinderella.com. More

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      ‘Promising Young Woman’ and ‘Borat’ Win at Writers Guild Awards

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      In three of the last five years WGA winners have gone on to take the screenplay Oscars. But union rules mean that not all of the Academy Award nominees were eligible here.Two of this award season’s most unique contenders triumphed Sunday night, as the dark dramedy “Promising Young Woman” and the heavily improvised “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” took honors at the Writers Guild of America ceremony.In the original-screenplay category, the “Promising Young Woman” writer-director Emerald Fennell faced stiff competition in the form of 13-time WGA Award nominee Aaron Sorkin, whose “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is also considered a top Oscar contender. But Fennell was nominated for a best-director Oscar while Sorkin was snubbed, and the WGA win for “Promising Young Woman” is another key laurel for that film as it heads into the homestretch of the season.In his acceptance speech for “Borat,” Sacha Baron Cohen joked that the improvised movie may have won a screenplay award because it “employed 60 percent of the Writers Guild.” The large team of writers included Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman and Lee Kern, with a story by Baron Cohen, Hines, Swimer and Nina Pedrad. Because the movie is a sequel based on a pre-existing character, it won in the adapted screenplay category.In three of the last five years — including 2020, when “Jojo Rabbit” and “Parasite” triumphed — the two films that won the WGA Awards also went on to win their respective Oscar races. But two years ago, the guild gave its original-screenplay prize to “Eighth Grade,” a script that Oscar voters had failed to even nominate.And narrow rules of guild eligibility often preclude Oscar front-runners from taking part in the WGA Awards at all: This year, “Nomadland,” “Minari” and “The Father” were all ruled ineligible, since they were not written under a bargaining agreement from the WGA or its sister guilds. Still, if Fennell and the “Nomadland” writer Chloé Zhao go on to win the original and adapted screenplay Oscars, it will be the first year when both script races were won by women who were the sole credited writers of their films.WGA nominees were asked to send acceptance speeches ahead of time; only the winner’s would be played during the ceremony, which was pretaped and hosted by Kal Penn. Here are some of the night’s other top winners:Documentary screenplay: “The Dissident,” Mark Monroe, Bryan FogelDrama series: “The Crown,” Peter Morgan, Jonathan WilsonComedy series: “Ted Lasso,” Jane Becker, Leann Bowen, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, Bill Lawrence, Jamie Lee, Jason Sudeikis, Phoebe Walsh, Bill Wrubel. (“Ted Lasso” also won best new series.)Original long form: “Mrs. America,” Tanya Barfield, Joshua Griffith, Sharon Hoffman, Boo Killebrew, Micah Schraft, April Shih, Dahvi WallerAdapted long form: “The Queen’s Gambit,” Scott Frank, Allan Scott, based on the novel by Walter Tevis More

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      ‘Promising Young Woman’ Director Emerald Fennell on Her Historic Oscar Nomination

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonOscar Nominations HighlightsNominees ListSnubs and SurprisesBest Director NomineesStream the NomineesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Projectionist‘Promising Young Woman’ Director Emerald Fennell on Her Historic Oscar NominationFor the first time, two women are up for best director, but a daylight-saving time mix-up almost kept the filmmaker from the announcement.Emerald Fennell, second from right, on the set with, among others, Carey Mulligan, left, and Laverne Cox.Credit…Merie Weismiller Wallace/Focus Features, via Associated PressMarch 15, 2021Updated 1:12 p.m. ET“Promising Young Woman” has been a major player this awards season, and writer-director Emerald Fennell had every reason to expect that Monday’s Oscar nominations would bring even more good news for her first feature.She just didn’t want to do herself in by dwelling on it.“Last night, I think I did what any sensible person would do: I watched about six hours of ‘Married at First Sight Australia’ to take my mind off it,” Fennell said. “Especially when you’re making an independent film, you can’t ever hope for something like this.”And after all that anticipation, Fennell almost missed the announcement entirely: The British filmmaker had planned to watch the nominations live, but she hadn’t factored in the hour lost to daylight saving. As her nomination for best original screenplay was read, an oblivious Fennell was still on a work call fielded from her office in the English countryside.She had a hunch something had gone wrong — or, oh so right — when her phone began to blow up with text messages: “I had to say very embarrassingly to the person on the call, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go, I think I’ve just been nominated for an Oscar!’”At least Fennell switched over in time to watch “Promising Young Woman” garner additional nominations for editing, directing and lead actress Carey Mulligan, as well as a final nod for best picture. How did she react as those nominations were read out? “There was a huge amount of screaming and crying,” Fennell said. “I don’t know what everyone else does.”It’s all the more meaningful for Fennell because her recognition alongside the “Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao is the first time that more than one woman has been nominated for the best-director Oscar in the same year. (Only five women have ever been nominated for that award.)“There’s no way of describing it without sounding immensely cheesy, but it means so much and I’m so proud,” Fennell said. “Chloé is such a devastatingly brilliant and talented person, and in fact, there were so many incredible female directors this year I want to meet in real life and hug, when we’re allowed.”In the meantime, Fennell has a flood of texts to respond to — she read me her favorite, from her friend Chris: “Congratulations, I still haven’t seen it” — and the rest of her day to get through. The idea of suddenly filling all that time caused her no end of consternation.“I don’t know what to do! What should I do, you tell me!” she fretted. “I can’t watch any more ‘Married at First Sight.’ I think I’m going to have to lie on the floor and cry because I don’t drink or smoke anymore or do anything fun.” Fennell sighed: “I’m just going to look out the window, I suppose.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More