Welcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.”
Attention, Marvel and DC! Julia Roberts would love to be in a superhero movie.
When I suggested the idea to the Oscar winner at the “Ticket to Paradise” premiere in L.A., she beamed, “Wouldn’t it be awesome?”
Her co-star George Clooney added, “We should do one — you and me!”
However, Roberts isn’t looking to don a cape for her comic book movie debut. “Maybe an apron,” she said. “Is there a superhero apron?”
Meanwhile, Clooney, who infamously played the Caped Crusader in 1997’s “Batman & Robin,” revealed that his 5-year-old son Alexander’s favorite superhero is … Batman. “I said, ‘You know I was Batman?’” Clooney smiled. “And he was like, ‘Not anymore.’”
“Ticket to Paradise” marks Roberts and Clooney’s first rom-com together. “I read it and thought, ‘This only works with George,’ and he felt the same way, and then we called each other,” Roberts recalled.
The two play a divorced couple who travel to Bali to try to prevent their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) from rushing into marriage. “It was fun because we get to be snarky to one another,” Clooney said of the movie, which was written and directed by Ol Parker. “It’s funny. It makes us laugh.”
Co-star Lucas Bravo said that Clooney and Roberts were constantly making him break. “They would do anything in their power to make me lose it,” he told me. “They’re good at it.”
They shot the film in Queensland, Australia. “I got some hang time in with Julia,” Dever said. “She was so sweet and invited me and my sister to lunch. George took us on a casual sunset boat ride with just the cast and we got to have tiny little ham sandwiches and then we went back to their house and they made us pizza.”
The backdrop of the carpet included an enormous still of Roberts and Clooney. Looking at the photo, Clooney cracked, “I’ve been airbrushed the shit out of.”
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Expect more shenanigans when Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner reunite as Pumbaa and Timon for Barry Jenkins’ “The Lion King” prequel “Mufasa: The Lion King.” Rogen tells me he usually does his voiceover work solo, but he and the “Bros” star have always recorded together. “It’s so rare that I actually get to be in the room with the person that I’m performing with,” he says. “And when it’s someone like Billy, who is just so funny and fun to perform with, we have a good dynamic that makes it a real pleasure.”
Rogen laughs when I ask if he’ll be showing off his musical chops for the movie: “I can say I don’t sing much.” He then jokes that he’s reached out to Beyoncé to “write me something.”
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Tilda Swinton is no longer attached to Adam McKay’s television reboot of Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite.” “I don’t think I’ll be a part of it, but I’m very happy to be a cheerleader,” Swinton, who reportedly signed on for the project in February 2020, told me at a screening of her drama “The Eternal Daughter” at The London West Hollywood.
Swinton does double duty in writer-director Joanna Hogg’s mystery drama. She plays not only an elderly woman named Rosalind but also the daughter, Julie, taking care of her. “What’s interesting for me is that I never looked like my mom,” Swinton said. “I look very like my father, but Rosalind looks very much like my mother. So when I see Rosalind, I don’t really see me. It’s not unfreaky. Rosalind also speaks a language that Joanna’s mother and my mother spoke. It’s a sort of frequency. It’s a very, very, very strange kind of spooky experience for us.”
Swinton also appears in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio.” She has yet to see the final cut of the stop-action adaptation but assured me this was no Mickey Mouse treatment: “It’s not Disney, put it that way. But then the book was never Disney. Disney took it on a ride. Guillermo brings it back.”
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Jason Blum thought he had a brilliant idea when he offered to donate the Miata featured in his breakout project “Paranormal Activity” to the Academy Museum. “They didn’t want it,” the “Halloween Ends” producer told me at the Academy Museum Gala. “Isn’t that sad? … ‘Paranormal Activity’ didn’t win any Academy Awards — it wasn’t even nominated. Maybe that’s why?”
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Is Lily Collins giving Emily a make-under for Season 3 of “Emily in Paris”?
Not exactly, but the titular star of the Netflix series tells me, “It’s always big. It’s always more and colorful bit it’s also pared down a little bit and elevated. There’s a sophisticated feel to Emily now that she’s more grounded in her surroundings.”
She also promises the new episodes will be full of Emily’s signature dramarama. “There’s twists and turns the entire season,” she says. “I’m definitely excited we get to do a Season 4 because we leave you on another cliffhanger.”
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