When I recorded my podcast with screenwriter Anthony McCarten in October, the awards prospects for his latest endeavor, “Darkest Hour,” seemed to be diminishing. Outside of star Gary Oldman‘s performance as Winston Churchill and the impressive makeup wizardry of Kazuhiro Tsuji, it seemed like the period drama was getting left a little bit in the dust from other Oscar contenders.
Oh, how a few months changes things.
Yes, “Darkest Hour” did get overlooked by many of the nation’s critics groups, but the buzz is Academy members are fans and, more importantly, so is the public. As of New Year’s Day, it’s estimated that the Focus Features release has earned $20.2 million domestically in no more than 806 theaters. In fact, it even slightly outperformed Guillermo del Toro‘s “The Shape of Water” over the holiday break. Many now, including this pundit, believe “Darkest Hour” has an excellent shot at earning a Best Picture nomination and much of the credit for the film’s compelling look at this pivotal time in British history has to go to McCarten.
Gary Oldman marvels at Churchill’s ‘superhuman’ achievements in ‘Darkest Hour’ [Interview]
A two-time Oscar nominee as both the screenwriter and producer of “The Theory of Everything,” the New Zealand native talks during our conversation about how he was sparked to write about Churchill’s early days after coming across some of his more famous speeches. It was a process that eventually brought director Joe Wright on board and, thankfully, Oldman to play the iconic British Prime Minister.
During our chat, McCarten goes into detail about the differences between “Dunkirk” and “Darkest Hour” (they both take place around the same central event in WW II) and his upcoming Netflix project “The Pope.” The latter centers on the strange circumstance that finds two living Popes at the moment. The Fernando Meirelles directed film will star Johnathan Pryce as the “sitting” Pope, Pope Francis, and Anthony Hopkins as his predecessor, Pope Benedict.
One quick note, at the time of the recording none of the drama involving Bryan Singer on the set of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” another film McCarten co-wrote, had even been hinted at publicly and we didn’t even have time to broach his involvement with the project.
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Check out previous episodes with “The Beguiled‘s” Sofia Coppola, “Darkest Hour‘s” Ben Mendelsohn, “Downsizing‘s” Christoph Waltz, “Blade Runner: 2049‘s” Denis Villeneuve, “Thor: Ragnarok‘s” Taika Waititi, “The Florida Project‘s” Sean Baker, “Detroit‘s” John Boyega, get behind the scenes with “RuPaul’s Drag Race” producers and more on Soundcloud or on iTunes.