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WIRE Buzz: Audible's Sesame Street podcast; Tenet goes big with IMAX featurette; and Eternals
This WIRE Buzz is brought to you by the letter 'P' for podcast. Audible announced today that it has partnered with Sesame Workshop for the world's first-ever Sesame Street podcast.
Aimed at families with young listeners (preschool age, to be exact), The Sesame Street Podcast with Foley & Friends is hosted by a brand-new monster by the name of Foley, who has a knack for making silly sound effects. She'll often be joined by the familiar voices of established characters like Elmo, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster. Described as the first of its kind, the podcast also features original music, interactive games, and jokes for budding minds.
"Sesame Workshop has been one of the most respected names in family entertainment for over 50 years, and we’re honored to bring this unique Sesame Street podcast to listeners," Rachel Ghiazza, Executive Vice President, Head of US Content at Audible said in a statement. "Audible offers immersive audio entertainment for a wide array of listeners, and we’re thrilled to expand our children’s content with this exceptional release. The Sesame Street Podcast with Foley & Friends delivers what parents need most now: educational entertainment that little ones will love, guaranteed."
"As families’ media habits evolve, Sesame Workshop is ready to meet them wherever they are with engaging content that sparks playful learning. Together with Audible, we’re creating a rich audio-only world that will come to life in kids’ imaginations," added Scott Chambers, Sesame Workshop’s Senior Vice President/General Manager, Educational Media and Licensing, North America. “We can’t wait for our friends at home to explore the sounds of Sesame Street in a whole new way. Welcome to the neighborhood, Foley!”
The podcast launches exclusively on Audible Thursday, Oct. 15, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. There will be 15 installments (each running for 15 minutes) in all. Every episode revolves around a different, kid-friendly topic such as birthdays and learning the alphabet.
Explore the incredible scope of Christopher Nolan's Tenet in a fresh featurette from IMAX that highlights the director's commitment to grand storytelling. According to IMAX Camera Technician Scott Smith, the production "used more cameras and shot more film than any project's ever shot." Also written by Nolan, the mind-bending film (which has been delayed several times at this point) blends classic spy tropes with time travel, or as it's referred to in the movie: "inversion."
John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman) stars as a CIA agent tasked with preventing a world-ending catastrophe in the future that threatens to undermine the present.
Things only get more complicated from there (trust us, we've seen the movie and are still trying to comprehend large chunks of the plot), but you can bet it's gonna look damn good on those IMAX cameras. As Nolan states in the video below, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and his crew "were able to get the camera absolutely everywhere that I could conceive of. We had such fun with them; we were just using them as if they were any old camera." The equipment, which costs between $12,000 - $16,000 a week in rental fees alone, was even used to run backwards, so as to practically create the effect of inversion.
Take a look:
Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Himesh Patel, Michael Caine, and Martin Donovan co-star.
Now hosting early access screenings, Tenet officially opens in U.S. theaters tomorrow (Thursday, Sep. 3) just in time for the long Labor Day weekend. Warner Bros. has already released the flick into international theaters, which have brought in over $50 million at the box office so far.
See what critics have been saying here.
We don't know a ton about Marvel's Eternals movie, but you can rest assured that it will represent a clear and concise vision from director Chloé Zhao in her studio tentpole debut.
"I have such deep, strong, manga roots," she recently told The Hollywood Reporter. "I brought some of that into Eternals. And I look forward to pushing more of that marriage of East and Wes ... How much further and bigger can we go after Endgame? Because I’m not just making the film as a director. I’m making the film as a fan."
"Her initial pitch to us was fascinating," added Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige. "And frankly one of the reasons we moved forward on the movie was because of the vision that she brought to it."
While Eternals is the biggest thing Zhao has ever done as a filmmaker, she was still able to employ some of her indie sensibilities into the production. "I shot exactly the way I wanted to shoot," she said. "On location. A lot of magic hour. Three-hundred-sixty degrees on the same camera as I did on Nomadland. Same rigs. It’s a bit surreal. I’m still waiting for the shoe to drop. It hasn’t. I think I got lucky in that Marvel wants to take risks and do something different."
That risk taking includes the MCU's first overt LGBTQ love story between Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) and his husband (Haaz Sleiman). "[It] was always sort of inherent in the story and the makeup of the different types of Eternals," Feige explained. "I think it is extremely well done, and I look forward to that level of inclusion in our future movies being less of a topic."
Don Lee, Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Keoghan, Lauren Ridloff, Salma Hayek, Lia McHugh, and Kit Harrington co-star in the project.
Written by Kaz and Ryan Firpo, Eternals is slated to arrive in theaters everywhere Feb. 12. 2021.
