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Wicker 2026 Cast Interview, Deadline.com (x) Sundance FF '26.

[Extract]

Skarsgård said he initially found the role of the wicker husband a challenging concept.

“I was a little intimidated reading the script,” he said. “I knew I wanted to do it, and I was incredibly excited about playing this character, but he has a purity that scared me. I often gravitate towards conflicted characters, characters where there’s a darkness, or an internal struggle, or some kind of weird dichotomy of friction. And there’s a lot of friction in the movie, but none of it comes from the wicker husband. He is just pure — not naive — he’s just there. He loves his wife, and it’s just happy and sweet. So that scared me a bit.”

"With more than a month to go before IATSE‘s current contracts expires, the union and the studios have come to a tentative agreement on a new deal.

As fears of another Hot Labor Summer had Hollywood anxious, the successful negotiation news Tuesday evening comes a mere two days into the resumption of talks between the parties this week.

Touting wage gains, AI guardrails, and pension and health plans increases, IATSE leaders just sent out the news to its members of its 13 Locals in Hollywood. As you can see below, with increased penalties for extended workdays, safety concerns and crew well-being played a not insignificant role in the bargaining:

Dear Basic Agreement Sisters, Brothers, and Kin: The Basic Agreement Negotiating Committee has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP. Below are a few of the details about the proposed deal. A complete summary of the tentative agreement will be released in a few days, and in addition to local town hall meetings, a multi-local webinar will take place on Saturday, July 13th at noon PST to review the proposed language in the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). To avoid undermining our fellow members in the Area Standards Agreement (ASA) Locals, who remain in negotiations with the AMPTP, we will wait to release full summaries of both tentative agreements simultaneously. Some of the proposed changes in the Basic tentative agreement include: scale rate increases of 7%, 4%, and 3.5% over the three-year term; hourly workers will receive triple time (3x hourly) wage when any workday exceeds 15 elapsed hours, all On Call classifications will now receive double time on the 7th day of the workweek, and additional increases in pay will take effect on non-dramatic productions under the Videotape Supplemental Agreement. The tentative deal includes new protections around Artificial Intelligence, including language that ensures no employee is required to provide AI prompts in any manner that would result in the displacement of any covered employee. These changes in the Basic Agreement are in addition to the tentative agreements reached in the Local Agreement negotiations. For the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans (MPIPHP), the tentative agreement includes additional payments from employers that would address the $670M funding gap, including new streaming residuals. Additionally, no participant shall incur a break in service for plan year 2023. We thank everyone who participated in the 2024 Basic Agreement negotiations process. From start to finish, your input was invaluable and ensured that our Negotiations Committee was at the bargaining table with clear goals and a consensus for how to achieve them. The ratification timeline will be forthcoming and we look forward to presenting to you the complete package. In Solidarity

The correspondence to members was signed by Tobey Bays of Local 44, Cathy Repola of Local 700, Greg Reeves of Local 728, Bob Denne of Local 729, Chuck Parker of Local 800, DeJon Ellis Jr of Local 80, Alex Tonisson of Local 600, Marcy Brooks of Local 884, Patric Abaravich of Local 871, Karen Westerfield of Local 706, Brigitta Romanov of Local 892, Adam Nestra-West of Local 705, and Scott Bernard of Local 685.

The announcement to members from the Locals leaders was followed within minutes by a joint statement from IATSE and the Carol Lombardini-led Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers:

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) announced a tentative agreement on all issues for the Hollywood Basic Agreement and Videotape Agreement negotiations. The tentative agreement is now pending ratification by the unions’ membership. Members and signatories will have the opportunity to review the agreement in the form of a Detailed Summary 2-3 days following this announcement, as well as a Memorandum of Agreement (M.O.A.) an estimated 2 weeks following this announcement. The parties now look forward to closing negotiations for the Area Standards Agreement.

To put tonight’s deal in context, the IATSE Basic Agreement covers the around 50,000 members of the mainly L.A.-based 13 West Coast Locals. The still to be completed Area Standards Agreement is for the 23 Locals across the nation and their 20,000 members.

Apple TV+ is continuing its natural history push.

The streamer is launching new wildlife series Big Beasts, narrated by Tom Hiddleston.

The series, which has been in the works for two years, takes viewers around the globe, from freezing poles to tropical rainforests, to meet nature’s most captivating giants.

It features massive species filmed across 17 countries, including the gray whale, the elephant seal, the giant otter, the gorilla, the hippopotamus, the brown bear, the ostrich, the orangutan, the tiger and the polar bear. Viewers will see that it’s not easy being big—the larger the animal, the greater the challenges they face.

Big Beasts comes from the creative team of Apple’s Tiny World, which launched in 2020 and was narrated by Paul Rudd. It is produced by ITV-owned Plimsoll Productions with Tom Hugh-Jones (Planet Earth II), Grant Mansfield (Hostile Planet) and Martha Holmes (Life) exec producing.

Alongside Tiny World, it is the latest wildlife series for the streamer, Earth Night At Color, which was also narrated by Tom Hiddleston, and Prehistoric Planet, narrated by David Attenborough with Job Favreau as showrunner.

The ten-part series will premiere on April 21, just before Earth Day.

Game of Thrones alumna Kate Dickie quietly joined the Season 2 cast of Disney+ series Loki, sources tell Deadline.