Another day, another Mary Poppins Returns screening – not that we’re complaining! Meanwhile, the film continues to make steady box office progress, and is closing in on $300m worldwide–with its theatrical debut in Hong Kong and Japan set for later this month. We’re still keeping everything crossed for Emily’s first Academy Award nomination, though.
We’ve added some adorable photos of Emily, joined by her good friend Blake Lively and husband Ryan Reynolds at a private reception for Mary Poppins Returns and director Rob Marshall in New York City last night (Jan 10). Enjoy!
DEADLINE – Though they started dating a decade ago, John Krasinski & Emily Blunt had never worked together before this year, when the Krasinski-directed A Quiet Place cast them as husband and wife and tapped into the unspoken language they’ve come to share. Krasinski was nervous to approach Blunt to star, but on screen, as they navigate a world in which the slightest sound could mean instant death, it’s that real-life connection that telegraphs everything another movie might wrap up in dialogue. The film has been the runaway horror hit of the year, and Kransinki is already at work writing a sequel.
A Quiet Place has had an extraordinary life in the nine months since its release. Could you have predicted this?
Emily Blunt: Has it been nine months? My god!
John Krasinski: We’re ancient. I’ll speak for myself when I say it’s completely and totally surreal. I genuinely don’t know if I’ve processed it yet. We treated it like a neat little indie movie; it felt like an indie movie. We thought it was really special, really unique, and really different, but we were pretty sure we wouldn’t get much more than four or five high-fives from friends. And turns out we have a lot more friends that we didn’t even know about.
Blunt: It has been overwhelmingly exciting for me to see people watch this film and have their hair blown backwards by it. I always thought we would get here. I remember John showed me one little bit of one scene in the early stages of the edit, while he was trying to find the first cut. It was when the basement is flooded with water. I flipped out. I remember saying, “John, this is so cool!” And as he knows, we Brits don’t enthuse too readily, unless we really mean it, so I think he knew I meant it.
People who hate genre movies loved this movie. People who had never seen a horror movie before loved this movie. It has been universal. The afterlife that it has had, it’s not something either of us really know how to contend with, but it’s wonderful.
The movie gives away very little of the backstory on the world, but you had all that information in your head, John. Were you surprised by the questions that came?
Krasinski: I love the idea that people are putting the puzzle pieces together and coming up with theories. I love getting challenged about it. Like, why don’t they just live by the waterfall? I get that question on Twitter all the time. How would they build a house? How would they break ground? People are like, “Oh. Yeah, I guess.”
Blunt: Just live in the waterfall!
Krasinski: Exactly. [laughs] But it was always one of the things Emily and I loved from the very beginning, this idea that if you know more than the family does, the tension goes out of the room. It was a way to bond you to the family quicker. If you feel there’s an answer to all this, you don’t care.
VARIETY – The cast of “Mary Poppins Returns” has been selected for the Ensemble Performance Award by the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
The honor will be presented at the festival’s Film Awards Gala on Jan. 3 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Cast members Emily Blunt, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Salah and Joel Dawson are expected to attend the event, where the award will be presented by the film’s director Rob Marshall. The festival, now in its 30th edition, runs from Jan. 3 to Jan. 14.
“‘Mary Poppins Returns is a happy film, that re-creates the magic and adventure of the first film,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “In this outstanding sequel, Mary Poppins is back to help the next generation of the Banks family as they race to keep the bank’s executives from foreclosing on their home. Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda lead an excellent ensemble cast that also includes Colin Firth, Meryl Streep, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury and many others.”
Past recipients of the Ensemble Performance Award include Best Picture winner “Argo,” as well as past Best Picture nominees “American Hustle,” “The Big Short,” “Hidden Figures,” “The Imitation Game” and “The Social Network.”
The film has been named one of the top 10 movies of the year by AFI and the National Board of Review. It’s received three Critics Choice nominations, three Golden Globe nominations and a SAG Award nomination for Blunt.
Many congratulations to Emily, who has been nominated for her roles in A Quiet Place and Mary Poppins Returns. I hope this will be a big awards season for her–and it would be much deserved if so. You can view the full list of SAG nominations by clicking here.
DEADLINE – Usually the SAG Awards are good for one or two out-of-left-field nominees in its movie competition, and you could say Emily Blunt’s double score for Lead Actress in Mary Poppins Returns and Supporting Actress in A Quiet Place might qualify.
Both are well-deserved, but few were predicting the latter, especially in a category that omitted more obvious choices such as Nicole Kidman; Claire Foy; and especially If Beale Street Could Talk’s Regina King, who has been cleaning up on the critics circuit. She was shut out along with her movie today, perhaps in favor of another, less-speculated contender, Margot Robbie in Mary Queen of Scots, along with Blunt’s brilliant near-silent turn in A Quiet Place. Two years ago, Blunt also scored a stunner with SAG by gaining a Best Actress nomination for The Girl on the Train, which was the only major recognition she got for that role awards-wise.
Beyond the shakeup in the uber-competitive Supporting Actress race, the big news from SAG was the continuing strong move toward diversity in the Outstanding Cast category, which in the past few years has honored movies including The Help and Hidden Figures with big wins (last year it went to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). This time around SAG not only welcomed the largely all-black cast of Black Panther but also Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and the first all Asian-American cast from a studio film in 25 years, Crazy Rich Asians. Add in the unexpected entrant here, Bohemian Rhapsody — which, in addition to its expected Best Actor nom for Rami Malek as Queen singer Freddie Mercury, also brought along its whole cast in a significant move that could portend a bigger showing at the Oscars than some might have thought. After all, actors are the biggest voting bloc in the Academy by far, and they have certainly embraced the musical biopic here, and movies with a heavy musical component in general, if you throw in A Star Is Born and Mary Poppins Returns.
David Lee/Focus FeaturesA Star Is Born’s inclusion for Cast was a no-brainer, and with four nominations overallm it predictably led all films this year and might be a nominal front-runner in what is still continuing to be a wide-open race this awards season. Panther’s nom, its only mention other than for Stunt Ensemble, reps a breakthrough for superhero movies and wouldn’t be a shocker to see its landmark cast onstage January 27th at the Shrine, when the winners are announced. Here’s an interesting point to make – and you can bet pundits will because we always do: Only two movies have gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar without at least being nominated for SAG Outstanding Cast: Braveheart in 1995 and last year’s The Shape of Water, which many thought at the time spelled doom for Guillermo del Toro’s unique love story but obviously didn’t. For a few minutes the year before, we also thought La La Land had broken the SAG un-nominated Cast curse, but you know what happened there. Consider the fact that such presumed Oscar favorites as Green Book, The Favourite, Vice, Mary Poppins Returns, Roma and If Beale Street Could Talk are among those missing in action in the Cast category, and it certainly adds intrigue to the race.
