Beast

Baltasar Kormákur reveals the difficulty of shooting in South Africa, how he pulled off long takes and his relationship with Idris Elba.

You’re in Africa, and you have large parts of the film in a car and in a singular setting. And for me the scenes when he’s really drunk and talking to his friend, that’s where you really see that he is so soulful and has a lot of depth. And then the next one, the next one, and suddenly you’re in this incredible trouble. You go to the cinema to be in awe. And you can have characters that are horrible, and then you start liking them. And I remember when we shot that the first time — after two days of shooting and rehearsing — the first one was just perfect. Then, when I was getting ready to go to Africa, I went to my parents to say goodbye and I told them about the project. But it allows for a lot of filmmaking,” says Kormákur, who previously went undersea for “The Deep” and to Nepal for “Everest.” “I can play with this, I can push it a little bit and do something a little different with it. And you have to be in the momentum throughout. I can play with this, I can push it a little bit and do something a little different with it. And Universal wanted to know about and get their hands on this video that I made for Netflix! “I didn’t think about it then, but when I read the script, I thought, it’s a simple story.

Other times, it can be as simple as five words: Idris Elba fights a lion. This is the premise of Beast, a new thriller starring Elba as Dr. Nate Samuels. The ...

Despite the exposition and a few scenes where everything feels logically far-fetched, Beast is a nail-biting thriller with 90 minutes of excitement. Furthermore, the focus pullers on this film earned their paycheck for the amount of work they had to do with a style designed to zero the audience in on our characters and their situation. The issue is that the older daughter, Meredith (Iyana Halley), feels like a mouthpiece for the screenwriter to verbalize exposition inorganically. The story is simple, the pacing is tight, and the movie works. Beast is as exciting as you would want it to be, throwing the characters into the wilderness with no phones and nobody to help. This is the premise of Beast, a new thriller starring Elba as Dr.

Movie review: In the exciting wildlife thriller 'Beast,' Idris Elba plays a doctor who travels to South Africa with his daughters and winds up confronting a ...

The lion has it out for all humans, and the fact that Nate and his kids are being accompanied by close family friend Martin (Sharlto Copley), a wildlife biologist who also works as an enforcer for the local nature preserve and sometimes even hunts poachers, makes no difference to the creature. When the attacks do come, the camera swiftly spins around and shifts perspective so that we see just how incredibly, terrifyingly fast these lions can be. Nate wants to use this opportunity to mend emotional fences with his girls, but he doesn’t quite know how. One of the keys to Idris Elba’s appeal is that he always looks as though he has something else on his mind. Kormákur stages the film as a series of suspenseful long takes that follow the characters while allowing us to see what’s happening behind and around them. Elba plays Nate Samuels, a widowed doctor who is traveling with his two daughters, Norah (Leah Jeffries) and Meredith (Iyana Halley), to his recently deceased wife’s home village in South Africa when they are confronted and pursued by a lion whose pride has been wiped out by poachers.

It's a movie well engineered as a late-summer diversion — a big cat movie for the dog days of August — that Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur (“Adrift,” “ ...

The shark in “Jaws” put an entire community under the microscope, but the scope of “Beast” is narrowly fixed on Nate and his girls. But while the lion is CGI, the South African location is genuine, and Kormákur and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot’s long, well-choreographed takes give “Beast” an immersive quality well beyond the genre’s usual slapdash cutting. But the circle of life also pertains to movies, and it was probably inevitable that the lion’s time would come.

The president of Macro Film Studios went on multiple game drives while making the Idris Elba-starring film.

Then Neil said, “He’s going to knock down a tree to show us he’s boss.” The elephant walks over and he knocks a tree down, showing off for the females. Neil announced, “I don’t have my radio.” I said, “Excuse me?” He said, “I don’t have a way to get in touch with the lodge. We started driving back toward the lodge, and Neil apologized: “I’m so sorry you’re not going to see the herd and it’s your last day here.” Right as he said that I looked to my right and started yelling, “There they are!” There were 22 elephants! There was no way I was going back at night, but our DP returned after dark and saw the leopard feeding. He’s going to charge our vehicle.” I’m like, “Excuse me?” He said, “Just do exactly what I say.” Meanwhile, the trees start to part and this huge elephant walks out, so massive compared to the others. We also filmed in the Orange River Valley, near the border of Namibia, and stayed at Tutwa Desert Lodge. All I was thinking about was the hyenas and leopards coming to kill me. In that moment I was very appreciative of what I get to do for a living, that my feet were firmly planted on the motherland and I was getting to do this as my job. Neil would come pick me up, like, “Do you want to go on a game drive?” And we’d go find the animals — rhinos, giraffes, baboons. As we drove back to the lodge the sun was going down, and I was bummed because I really wanted to see an elephant. The ranger said, “James, look up.” And there was an elephant right in front of us! I found myself doing things I never thought I would do, like getting out of the safari vehicle around wild animals and touching a white rhino’s coarse hide when it came right up to the vehicle — crazy stuff like that.

The adventure film “Beast” sees a grieving Idris Elba square off against a lion in the South African bush. It's further proof that Elba is a movie-star ...

Yet there’s something to be said for the way in which Elba unaffectedly conveys both fatherly he-man might and wounded-widower sorrow, never unduly straining in either direction as Nate grapples with terrifying circumstances and does battle against a primal brute that can’t be outrun, overpowered or outlasted. Philippe Rousselot’s cinematography is lithe and intense, and by not cutting away during its centerpieces, the film repeatedly builds and maintains a sense of unease and impending doom. It’s this survivor that now stalks the land, much to the misfortune of Nate, Meredith and Norah, who find themselves in the crosshairs of a predator on a mission of revenge against all humans, whom it blames for its pride’s slaughter. Nate is plagued by mysterious dreams in which he navigates a shadowy realm of women, as if he’s searching for something precious that’s been lost, and when he’s awake, he’s forced to deal with Meredith’s coldness and anger at him for having abandoned his wife in her time of need—the result, it’s eventually revealed, of an inopportune marital separation. Nate Samuels, an American doctor traveling to South Africa with his two daughters, older Meredith (Iyana Halley) and younger Norah (Lea Sava Jeffries), in the wake of his wife’s death. [for snappy, inventive genre films](https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/fall-is-the-most-anxiety-inducing-movie-of-the-summer) that [deliver punchy thrills](https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/netflixs-the-carter-makes-the-gray-man-look-like-childs-play) in air-conditioned theaters affording respite from the sweltering heat, and Beast skillfully fits that bill.

En 'Beast', el astro de Hollywood Idris Elba interpreta un papel distinto.

Después ponían a un doble de acción en un uniforme verde con el que me peleaba, tomando en cuenta lo que sucede con un ser humano cuando es atacado por un animal tan poderoso. Después, sacábamos al doble y yo hacía lo mismo sin él, por mí mismo, lo que era un trabajo completo de actuación; y después, lo hacían de nuevo, pero sin nadie en el encuadre, solo con la cámara en movimiento. No es el héroe, no es alguien que sabe pelear ni que tiene armas, sino alguien que es un papá y que está muy metido en lo de ser un papá. Has hecho muchas cosas con CGI en tu carrera; has estado en seis películas de Marvel y en una de DC, pero en este caso, todo tenía que lucir muy realista. Las cosas que suceden aquí entre los leones y los seres humanos no podrían haberse filmado en realidad, por lo que parecía inevitable el empleo de la CGI. Cuando recibiste el guion, ¿la primera página decía muy claramente que no se iban a emplear leones reales, en caso de que tuvieras la duda? Creo que esa es una manera refrescante de presentar a un personaje en una película. Los leones no atacan a los seres humanos a no ser que estén separados de la manada o que no tengan absolutamente nada más que comer. Tu personaje en la película es muy fuerte, pero más allá de tener que pelear con el león solitario porque no tiene otra opción, es un doctor. Me imagino que el hecho de estar ante una película en la que se combinaban todos estos elementos fue muy importante para ti. Ya habías hecho algunas películas en diferentes partes de África, que es, por supuesto, un continente muy grande, como fue el caso de “Sometimes in April”, “Beasts of No Nation” y, claro está, la película sobre Mandela. Para nosotros, era muy importante mostrar cierta dinámica: por un lado, se encuentra el hombre que está perdiendo a su familia, que ha perdido a su esposa y que está perdiendo quizás a sus hijas, y por el otro, se encuentra un león que, debido a los cazadores furtivos, ha perdido a su propia familia y se ha vuelto peligroso.

Idris Elba, left and Will Packer attend the 2022 BET Awards at Microsoft Theater on June 26, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Bennett Raglin for BET ...

I haven’t directed myself in a movie so I feel like I want to do that and see what that comes with. We’ve got a shorthand, we talk a lot about the audience, we talk a lot about what’s realistic and organic, we talk a lot about characters. So I feel like I got more work to do. And so I just found that there was a lot of combinations here that, for a movie that has an African-American family at the heart of it, I just felt that it felt different. And something that could really bring audiences to the cinema to watch it and take the whole family and just go for a ride. I look at people that have worked for me and interned for me and have gone on to do amazing things and that’s a point of pride for me for sure. Any opportunity I get to even make a film, or produce one or direct, or encourage one—it feels like a new day. It needs to be something that immerses you, something that makes you feel like you’re in the action and apart of it. I love the fact that it happens to be a Black family, it just happens to be a Black dad with two Black daughters. I think it’s a fun man vs. “One of the things that I love about this movie is that it’s exactly what you said. But what begins as a journey of healing jolts into a fearsome fight for survival when a lion, a survivor of blood-thirsty poachers who now sees all humans as the enemy, begins stalking them.

Uni's Idris Elba movie, Beast, is currently clocking $4.1M today, and a $10M 3-day at 3,743 locations. Beast. Universal.

$1.07M (-24%), 3-day $3.8M (-29%)/Total $331.8M/Wk 7 $1.07M (-24%), Sat $1.78M, Sun $1.17M, 3-day $4M (-25%)/Total $332.1M/Wk 7 Super Hero is on a 90-day theatrical window and booked in 3,100 theaters (3,900 screens) and has all the super powers of Imax, 4DX, Dolby and D-box. 1 at the box office with its anime sequel Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, which is looking at $8M-$10M today (including those $4M previews) for a $17M-$20M take at 3,130 theaters. That said the Elba title is ahead of Universal’s Michael Bay movie, Ambulance, which ran up $700K on its Thursday before a lackluster $3.2M Friday, and $8.7M domestic start. The fans are enjoying it at 85% on Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak and a great 75% recommend, and critics aren’t ducking their heads with a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Super Hero played best on the coasts and the Southwest. Stateside the movie clicked past Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War ($678 million) as the No. Out of all the ads for Super Hero, 25% of those who attended this weekend said the YouTube trailer was the most influential versus TV (3%) and in-theater promotions (2%). Imax saw Super Hero as their highest-grossing anime opening ever with $3.4M at 327 screens, repping close to 17% of the pic’s opening weekend. Even iSpot shows Crunchyroll underspending Universal’s Beast this past weekend in TV spots by a significant amount (like 97% less). 1 for the week of April 23-29 with Demon Slayer at $27.7M).

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Amy Nicholson, Andy Klein and Charles Solomon review this weekend's new movie releases on streaming and on demand ...

John begins by asking Pritz about the overlap between indigenous genocide and rampant deforestation. - “ This week, our John Horn sat down with the film’s director Alex Pritz, who makes his documentary feature debut, to talk about the fight taking place deep in the Amazon rainforest between Brazilian cattle ranchers and the indigenous group, the Uru Eu Wau Wau.

This weekend, the Idris Elba-starring survival thriller Beast hits theaters nationwide. The man vs. nature flick features Elba as a recently widowed father ...

You know, my daughter, she was great, but the relationship in the film and the relationship with my daughter was — the chemistry wasn’t right for film, weirdly enough. The movie is based on a story by Jaime Primak Sullivan and is expected to bring in $10 million dollars in its opening weekend against a $36 million budget. nature flick features Elba as a recently widowed father who has to protect his daughters from a man-eating lion while on vacation in South Africa, and it has just been revealed that Elba's real-life daughter, Isan Elba, auditioned and lost out on the role to play one of her dad's on-screen kids.

Universal's action movie 'Beast,' starring Idris Elba, picked up just $925000 in Thursday previews.

Released by Crunchyroll, which specializes in Japanese anime films and TV series, “Super Hero” is targeting $13 million to $15 million in its opening weekend. “Broly” ended its run with $30 million domestically and $115 million worldwide, a mark “Super Hero” hopes to beat. The survival thriller is expected to bring in $10 million in its opening weekend.

Beast, a routine man vs. animal programmer that is making an appearance in theaters on its way to TV, opens in South Africa, where the criminal poachers who ...

With the rugged game warden and the doctor’s best friend acting as their guide, this rag-tag assembly of naive city dwellers sets out to see the sights, including the usual assortment of zebras and giraffes and other creatures more wisely viewed from a safe distance at the Bronx Zoo. He’s mean, hungry, computer generated (of course), and the size of a hairy humvee. animal programmer that is making an appearance in theaters on its way to TV, opens in South Africa, where the criminal poachers who have already driven tigers and elephants to the brink of extinction are now reducing the lion population to the same fate.

The film is a survival thriller at its heart, packed with action, suspense, and a final battle between Elba's character and the vengeful lion out for blood.

It was the only way he was able to move forward with a clean conscience, shedding his past mistakes to be there for his family in a way he wasn’t able to before the events of the film. Nate going toe-to-toe with the lion at the end of Beast is a metaphor for facing his past. By battling the lion, Nate is able to make some sort of peace with himself and his perceived failures. Nate blamed himself for the turmoil Mer and Norah were feeling about their mother’s death and his leaving them behind, as well as not being able to prevent his wife’s passing regardless of their separation. Despite his injuries, Nate survives thanks to the arrival of Banji, an employee of the reserve. It’s possible Nate kept dreaming of his wife because of his remorse. The dreams ultimately foreshadowed that, despite Nate’s feelings of unease, things were going to get tough, but turn out in his family’s favor. In Beast, [the lions rise to the fight](https://screenrant.com/lion-king-movie-alternate-ending-scar-death-disney/) because they see their rogue counterpart as a threat that might take over their pride and kill them. [The medical doctor](https://screenrant.com/who-the-best-doctor-in-greys-anatomy-is/) knew that the other two lions would eventually see the other big cat as a major threat to their pride. If they hadn’t been hunting to kill the pride of the rogue lion, the big cat — with its actions comparable to Early on in Beast, Martin mentioned that the male lions would do whatever it took to protect their pride from an external threat. When the animal appears at the school, Nate comes up with a plan to lure him to the pride of lions they passed the day before and fight him in front of the other big cats.

Baltasar Kormákur's thriller will be worth a watch on Peacock in a few weeks but you may want to skip the theater.

Then again, it’s as dry as the Serengeti in theaters now so if you’re feeling especially parched, Beast may just quench your thirst—especially if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief for its mercifully brief 93-minute runtime. Kind of like how this movie was dumped in theaters during the dog days of August… Beast may not be quite as good as The Shallows and Crawl but I do appreciate how it differs from those films, introducing a poacher element that helps us understand why the titular lion is going crazy, and may even provoke sympathy. But hey, you don’t go to a movie like Beast for the script or the drama. But at the end of the day, he’s still Idris Elba, which means he was more than serviceable in the lead. Filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur’s Beast is the latest in a long line of creature features about apex predators, with this one pitting Idris Elba.

The new thriller stars the British actor as a recently widowed father who travels to a South African wildlife reserve with his two daughters. What's supposed to ...

“He said [to his daughter], ‘Listen, at the end of the day we’re going to make the best decision for the movie. [Terms of use,](https://www.independent.co.uk/service/user-policies-a6184151.html) [Cookie policy](https://www.independent.co.uk/service/cookie-policy-a6184186.html) and [Privacy notice.](https://www.independent.co.uk/service/privacy-policy-a6184181.html) He also has an eight-year-old son, Winston, whom he shares with ex-partner Naiyana Garth. She’s great, but the relationship in the film and the relationship between my daughter was... [Privacy policy](https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en) and [Terms of service](https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en) apply. He shares Isan with ex-wife Hanne ‘Kim’ Nørgaard. What’s supposed to be a healing retreat turns into a fight for survival when a bloodthirsty lion begins stalking them. the chemistry wasn’t right for the film, weirdly enough,” he explained. [he said made him “open to the idea of love again”](https://indy-web-prod.brightsites.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/idris-elba-sabrina-love-marriage-b2125057.html).

Idris Elba says his daughter refused to speak to him for three weeks after she was rejected from starring alongside him in "Beast."

“I want to see them smart and the number one lead.” You know, my daughter, she was great, but the relationship in the film and the relationship with my daughter was — the chemistry wasn’t right for film, weirdly enough. It turns out Elba’s 20-year-old daughter auditioned to play one of his character’s daughters in the film, but she failed to land the role because her chemistry with her father “wasn’t right.” According to Elba, she stopped speaking to him for three weeks after she lost out on the role.