Mixed media production company Hornet has promoted Hana Shimizu to managing director/executive producer and brought Alex Unick on staff as a full-time EP.
Shimizu has been an integral part of the Hornet team for over a decade. She joined in 2004, only three years after Hornet was established. After working as a producer at Hornet for five years, she took a brief hiatus as a freelance producer where she further refined her skillsets before returning to Hornet in 2015 as an EP.
In April 2019, Unick began freelancing as an EP at Hornet. He brought with him a wealth of well-rounded industry experience, having worked at Psyop and Blacklist for 11 years, where he’d originally joined as an intern and very quickly leapfrogged through the ranks from assistant producer to producer to EP for his final two years at the sister companies.
In Shimizu’s new position as managing director, she will continue her EP duties alongside Unick, but will also work in closer tandem with managing partners Michael Feder and Greg Bedard to take Hornet into the next phase of its evolution.
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More