‘Lakewood’ Review: Naomi Watts Meets an iPhone Meets a School Shooting

EXCLUSIVE: Apple Studios has landed yet another high-caliber movie package, making a deal for an untitled film that Spider-Man director Jon Watts will write and direct, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt starring. The film will get a robust theatrical release as part of this.

Pat Saperstein Deputy EditorApple Studios has landed the hot movie package starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt with Jon Watts directing that’s been the subject of a feverish bidding war, according to two sources with knowledge of the project.“Spider-Man: Homecoming” director Watts will write, direct and produce with Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures and Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment producing. Lionsgate, Sony, Netflix, Universal, Amazon, Annapurna and Warner Bros.

Mick Jagger has opened up about The Rolling Stones touring without their “heartbeat” Charlie Watts.The longtime Stones drummer died at the age of 80 last month (August 24), prompting a huge outpouring of tributes from the music world and beyond.

In the film, Watts plays Amy Carr, a woman racing against time to save her child Noah (Colton Gobbo) as authorities place her small town on lockdown due to an active shooter incident. Noyce directed the film from a script by Chris Sparling, who produced with David Bois, Andrew Corkin, Alex Lalonde, Chris Parker, Zack Schiller and Dylan Sellers.

Ringo Starr has recalled a story of him jamming in his attic with the late Charlie Watts and John Bonham, saying it makes him wish TikTok existed in the 1970s.The Beatles’ drummer was speaking in a press conference about his new EP ‘Change The World’, when he remembered the three iconic drummers sharing a jam session.“I had a drum kit up in the attic – it was like a cinema attic, music, whatever you want to do up there. Charlie came, and so did John Bonham,” he remembered.

In the film, Watts plays Amy Carr, a woman racing against time to save her child Noah (Colton Gobbo) as authorities place her small town on lockdown due to an active shooter incident. Noyce directed the film from a script by Chris Sparling, who also produced with David Bois, Andrew Corkin, Alex Lalonde, Chris Parker, Zack Schiller, and Dylan Sellers.

EXCLUSIVE:  One of the few titles up for sale at TIFF this year was Phillip Noyce’s thriller Lakewood starring Naomi Watts, and Vertical Entertainment and Roadside Attractions have landed North American rights to the the female-driven thriller.

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Shot in rural northern Ontario during the pandemic, “Lakewood” follows Watts as a mother who risks her life to save her child after her small town is placed on lockdown over a school shooting. Much of the film shows Watts running through forest roads to get to the school, which Noyce says became very physically grueling for her.

Naomi Watts is opening up about her next project with Ryan Murphy.

Ryan Murphy, exec producer of TV hits ranging from “Glee” to “American Horror Story” to “Pose”, has a new show in the works that promises to bring fresh frights to the small screen.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaIt was an acting challenge that Naomi Watts couldn’t pass up.In “Lakewood,” the Oscar-nominated star of such grueling exercises in cinematic heroics as “The Impossible” and “King Kong,” spends the bulk of the movie running through the forest, struggling with spotty cellphone reception while trying to make her way to her teenage son’s school, which is under lockdown with an active shooter.

I’m not entirely convinced everything needs to be a movie. In this case, I don’t know that there is any way to make a film about the journey of a parent as they hear their child’s school has an active shooter without it feeling exploitative of our nation’s current epidemic of violence.

The global pandemic has provided filmmakers opportunities to get creative in order to make films in unusual circumstances. Already at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival  we have seen The Guilty with Jake Gyllenhaal in what is essentially a one man show connected to outside world simply by a phone in an emergency operations 911 call center.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticRidley Scott’s “The Last Duel” is set in France in the late 1300s, and after a clangingly violent early battle scene, as well as a flashforward to the title duel, in which a pair of sworn rivals in heavy armor come at each other on horseback, each brandishing his lance a lot (sorry, I couldn’t resist), the film looks like it might be a swords-and-blood-in-the-mud movie: one of those flashy brutal period spectaculars which Scott, the director of “Gladiator,”

Naomi Watts had the honor of lighting the Empire State Building this week!

New York City. The 52-year-old British actress stunned in a velvet Oscar De La Renta suit as she strolled down the sidewalk on Thursday.