After more than 30 years on screen — from his baby-faced days on Little House on the Prairie to his work on Arrested Development — Jason Bateman directed his first feature in 2013 with Bad Words. He now returns behind the camera with The Family Fang, an adaptation of the 2011 bestselling novel by Kevin Wilson. The Family Fang charts the 40-year saga of a family led by a pair of eccentric performance artists: Caleb (Christopher Walken) and Camille (Maryann Plunkett) Fang. In the ’70s, the Fang parents enlisted their children Baxter (Bateman) and Annie (Nicole Kidman) to act in their abrasive art projects. […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Apr 28, 2016The first, red band trailer has been released for Jason Bateman’s directorial debut, Bad Words, which stars Bateman as loathsome, brash 40-year-old Guy Trilby, who gets his kicks by hijacking elementary-aged spelling bees. Bad Words premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was picked up by Focus Features, in one of James Schamus’s final acquisitions for the company he helped found. Co-starring Alison Janney and Kathryn Hahn, Bad Words is slated to hit theaters next March. View the NSFW trailer above.
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 9, 2013With 288 films unfolding over 11 days, the Toronto International Film Festival offers just about every type of viewing experience imaginable, with every viewer becoming their own curator, cherry-picking from within their favorite sections. Business types congregate around the big acquisition titles. Cineastes check out the greats of world cinema, arriving in Toronto after Cannes. Discoverers peruse the Vanguard section searching for new talent. But what’s less often commented upon are the viewing experiences a large festival like Toronto produces for viewers intending to sample from it all. Entering a theater involves, before the lights dim, a mental recalibration, an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2013“In Production” is a regular column which focuses on notable independent films that are currently shooting. If you would like your film to be included in this space, please send an email to nick@filmmakermagazine.com Coming off the production of the long-awaited new season of Arrested Development (premiering Spring 2013 on Netflix), Jason Bateman has begun shooting his directorial debut, Bad Words, in Los Angeles. From Andrew Dodge’s blacklisted screenplay, Bad Words stars Bateman as a middle-aged cynic who hustles his way into the children’s National Spelling Bee, much to the dismay of one of its directors (Allison Janney). Rounding out […]
by Byron Camacho on Nov 16, 2012Writer-director Greg Mottola won himself a lot of fans with his smart, witty debut movie The Daytrippers, and then promptly disappeared from the indie scene for the best part of a decade, working in television while he tried to get his sophomore feature off the ground. In 2007, he returned to the big screen fray with Superbad, the Judd Apatow-produced teen comedy, which was a number one box office hit and made him a hot commodity once again. Going back to his indie roots, Mottola followed up the success of Superbad with Adventureland, a beautifully nuanced coming-of-age dramedy about a […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 13, 2011