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WIRE Buzz: Academy Museum scores Midsommar May Queen dress; Soderbergh assists Bill & Ted 3, more
Midsommar may not have won any Oscars, but it's still making cinema history. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures has announced it's won a charity auction for the eye-popping May Queen dress that star Florence Pugh sported in Ari Aster's folk horror hit and will include it as part of its collection when it opens in December.
In a tweet, the Academy said it acquired the costume as part of A24 Auctions with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the FDNY Foundation to support New York City firefighters and their families during the coronavirus epidemic. A24 is the company that distributed Midsommar to theaters last July.
The gown, decorated with 10,000 silk flowers and weighing in at a whopping 30 pounds, sold for $65,000, according to the A24 Auctions site. The company has put many of its movie's props, costumes and other collectibles up for bid over the years to raise money for various causes.
Bill & Ted fans have a certain famous Hollywood director to thank for helping bring the bodacious duo back for one more excellent adventure.
Steven Soderbergh — the filmmaker behind such hits as Sex, Lies and Videotape and the timeliest film ever in Contagion — went on Flaviar's NightCap Live to plug his Bolivian brandy, Singani 63 (because he's also in the spirit business, natch). And he couldn't resist during the long conversation spilling about his role in helping get Bill & Ted Face the Music, the third installment in Keanu Reeves' and Alex Winter's goofy sci-fi comedy series, off the ground after 29 long years.
According to the helmer, he and Bill & Ted scribe Ed Solomon had collaborated together on the HBO interactive series Mosaic, and when the latter told him he had written a third entry, Soderbergh suddenly found himself making calls lobbying on the project's behalf.
"I was just part of a group of people, including Scott Kroopf, the original producer, and Keanu and Alex, that really wanted to see this happen. My role was more as cheerleader than anything," the auteur told the show, per Collider. "The companies that own the rights to make a sequel, I called them up and said, “This script’s hilarious, why aren’t we doing this?'"
As fate would have it, they found a "fantastic director" in Galaxy Quest veteran Dean Parisot, and as Soderbergh notes, the movie's "really good" and feels "like it’s the perfect movie for people who want to feel better about what’s happening right now."
We can't wait. Bill & Ted Face the Music is set for release on Aug. 21.
Okay, it's not Halloween. It's a pandemic. But if you're gonna social distance in the Covid-19 era, better to do it in style if you're a horror fan.
Which is why horror makeup artist extraordinaire Tom Savini, whose credits include the original Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead and Creepshow among other classic flicks, is selling a protective facemask based on Jason Voorhees hockey mask-wearing, blood spattered terrifying visage.
Helping him out is Jason Baker, the special effects/makeup guru behind Bane's frightful appearance in The Dark Knight Rises.
They're not the only ones. Per The Hollywood Reporter, there's a rush on Bane masks in costume shops throughout the Los Angeles area thanks to the local government decree requiring the use of face guard when going out in public. And as SYFY has documented, there's plenty of other geek gear to go around these days.
