Considering the first looks coming from the trailers for David Lowery’s “Mother Mary,” it looks like the filmmaker behind “Ghost Story” and “The Green Knight” pulled together a pop-tastic feat with larger-than-life concert set pieces, ethereal costumes and impressive vocals from Oscar winner Anne Hathaway.
Add to the mix the real-world pop pedigree of Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff and FKA Twigs contributing original music, and we might just have A24’s latest indie hit on our hands.
But Lowery’s real secret ingredient to pulling it all off? A dash of Taylor Swift.
Apparently, the filmmaker turned to the Grammy winner’s 2018 Netflix concert feature for the “Reputation” tour “repeatedly” for inspiration.
“Her ‘Reputation’ concert film is one of the best concert films ever. It’s truly phenomenal. And for our concert sequences we looked at that repeatedly,” Lowery said in a new interview with Empire. “You would not believe the amount of time we were talking about Taylor.”
“We took three songs from ‘Reputation’ and broke it down, shot by shot, and looked at them like, ‘OK, if we were doing these, how much would these shots cost to do in visual effects?’,” he continued. “We used that as a budgeting tool, because we didn’t know how to wrap our heads around actually pulling off a stadium concert-show on a minimal budget. We were literally using ‘Reputation’ as a guide. I can go on about ‘Reputation’ all day.”
And it wasn’t just behind-the-scenes creatives turning to Netflix’s “Taylor Swift Reputation Stadium Tour” for guidance. Anne Hathaway was also a fan and even attended the “Eras” tour with Lowery in Europe.
Hathaway, who can next be seen starring in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” alongside Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci, even had a Swift-branded wrap present for the “Mother Mary” filmmaker.
“When we wrapped, Annie gave me a Taylor Swift style beaded bracelet with ‘Anti-Hero’ on it,” Lowery said. “I definitely brought a lot of Taylor Swift to the table in terms of who Mother Mary was. I would often would be like, ‘Imagine Taylor Swift in 10 or 15 years – that’s sort of who this character could be.’”
In it, Hathaway plays a pop star opposite Michaela Coel’s fashion designer, who re-connect ahead of a new tour. The film hits theaters April 17; watch the trailer below:
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