Everything Everywhere All At Once directors ‘the Daniels’ on this year’s craziest film – which just happens to be an Oscars frontrunner
There’s no doubt that this year’s Oscars frontrunner for best picture is not your standard awards fare.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is an existential exploration of relationships and love via a launderette, taxes and the multiverse, with themes of nihilism and absurdism thrown in for good measure.
The film’s writer-director duo, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – known collectively as “the Daniels” – admit they knew it would be a lot for audiences to take in.
In fact, they told Sky News they were almost looking for a tipping point.
Daniel Scheinert, left, and Daniel Kwan pictured at the Oscars preview luncheon. Pic: AP/Chris Pizzello
“We thought there would be the people who loved the movie and then for everyone else it would be like, this is too much,” said Kwan.
“Because we kind of made this movie as a stress test, to be like, how much can an audience member hold in their brain? How much can they experience before they give up?
“So we were expecting a lot more people to be like, ‘this was too much for me’ – and some people are saying it’s too much, and that’s fine, but this reception has been mind-blowing.”
The journey this film has been on has indeed been mind-blowing, with the Oscars coming almost a year to the day since its world premiere at the South By Southwest (SXSW) film festival.
From there it became a massive word-of-mouth hit, eventually becoming US studio A24’s highest-grossing film to date – taking more than £90m at the box office worldwide.
Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Pic: A24
It has since gone on to sweep awards season – stars including Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan have already picked up gongs at ceremonies including the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards for their performances – and it looks set to continue that success at the Oscars, where it’s nominated for 11 awards and is the clear favourite to win best picture.
For Kwan and Scheinert, who started out making music videos together before their first feature Swiss Army Man – which featured Daniel Radcliffe playing a flatulent corpse (yes, really) – it’s been curious to see their work finding a completely new audience.
‘We’re used to the weirdos of the world’
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Everything Everywhere star on Oscars nod
“We’ve been making strange things our whole careers,” Kwan said. “It’s been over a decade of just us putting weird things onto the internet and seeing how the world reacts.
“We’re used to a very specific crowd who loves our stuff – you know, the weirdos of the world… and they just connect with it because they see us as weirdos and it’s a beautiful thing where they love it, it’s some of their favourite stuff they’ve ever seen.
“But then for everyone else, they’re like, ‘it’s not my cup of tea’. We’re used to that.”
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But he also admits many compromises were necessary during the making of the drama.
The filmmakers were mindful to tread a line in order to make this movie appealing to viewers, with certain scenes (not least one involving a sex toy), raising some questions.
Making the strangeness accessible
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“[We asked ourselves] Okay, If we include the butt plug trophy fight scene, what percentage of our audience do we lose and is it worth it? There was a lot of bartering with ourselves, just being like, okay, selfishly, I want this, how many people are we going to be pushing away?” Kwan said.
“Because one of our barometers is always: can we show this to our moms? Which is a very funny thing to be asking ourselves when there’s so much vile stuff in our movies, but it is really important that we really want to make the strangeness accessible.”
Content wasn’t the only area of compromise – budget constraints also led to some difficult decisions about what could and couldn’t be included.
But Scheinert says there were some advantages to being somewhat constrained. “Sometimes the challenges really can be demoralising when you’re like, ‘oh man, we bit off more than we should have’. But a lot of times that process makes the movie so much better because it forces us to have conversations about like, ‘Does this matter’?”
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With the film’s release coming so soon after the pandemic changed attitudes to cinema-going, the pair say their intention was to make something that justified the extra length audiences go to in order to see a film on the big screen.
“This is a movie that if you have a short attention span, it doesn’t matter,” Kwan said. “If you want to just have a good time, this movie’s for you; if you want to just feel things and just feel catharsis, this movie has something for you.”
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“If you want to go with friends, leave the theatre and talk for a few hours at the bar, this is for you,” Scheinert continued.
“It is a love letter to all the reasons we like going to theatres – fight scenes are an obvious thing that people like in a theatre, but I love feeling uncomfortable in a theatre, I love hearing people around me get uncomfortable, I love seeing other people cry while there’s tears in my eyes – and I also love the movie Jackass and I love screaming, ‘oh no, no’, at the screen.”
You can watch the Academy Awards on Sunday 12 March from 11pm exclusively on Sky News and Sky Showcase. And for everything you need to know ahead of the ceremony, don’t miss our special Backstage podcast, out now, plus look out for our special episode on the winners from Monday morning.
An emergency vote on Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest has been called off following developments in the Middle East, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has said.
Contest organisers had scheduled “an extraordinary meeting of [its] general assembly to be held online” in early November after several countries said they would no longer take part in Eurovision if Israel participated.
The EBU said in a statement that following “recent developments in the Middle East” the executive board had agreed on Monday that there should be an in-person discussion among members “on the issue of participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026”.
It said the matter had now been added to the agenda of its winter general assembly, which will take place in December.
Further details about the session would be shared with EBU members in the coming weeks, it added.
It is not clear if a vote will still take place at a later date.
Austria is hosting next year’s show in Vienna. The country’s national broadcaster, ORF, told Reuters news agency it welcomed the EBU’s decision.
Sky News has contacted Israeli broadcaster KAN for comment.
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Will Eurovision boycott Israel?
Faced with controversy over the conflict in Gaza, Eurovision – which labels itself a non-political event – had said member countries would vote on whether Israel should or shouldn’t take part.
Slovenia and broadcasters from Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Iceland had all issued statements saying if Israel was allowed to enter, they’d consider boycotting the contest.
As one of the “Big Five” backers of Eurovision, Spain’s decision to leave the competition would have a significant financial impact on the event – which is the world’s largest live singing competition.
In September, a letter from EBU president Delphine Ernotte Cunci, said “given that the union has never faced a divisive situation like this before” the board agreed it “merited a broader democratic basis for a decision”.
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On Monday, Palestinian militant group Hamas freed the last living Israeli hostages from Gaza, and Israel released busloads of Palestinian detainees, under a ceasefire deal aimed at bringing an end to the two-year war in the Middle East.
The war began when Hamas stormed into Israel on October 7 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.
Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation, with airstrikes and ground assaults devastating much of the enclave and killing more than 67,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants but it says around half of those killed were women and children.
Entertainment
Diane Keaton, star of Annie Hall and The Godfather, has died aged 79 – US media reports
Actress Diane Keaton, who starred in films including The Godfather and Annie Hall, has died, reports have said.
People reported her death at the age of 79, citing a family spokesperson.
The magazine said she died in California with loved ones but no other details were immediately available, and representatives for Keaton did not immediately respond to inquiries from The Associated Press news agency.
Keaton’s death was also reported by the New York Times newspaper which said it has spoken to Dori Roth, who produced a number of Keaton’s most recent films, who confirmed she had died but did not provide any details about the circumstances.
With a long career, across a series of movies that are regarded as some of the best ever made, Keaton was widely admired.
She was awarded an Oscar, a BAFTA and two Golden Globe Awards, and was also nominated for two Emmys, and a Tony, as well as picking up a series of other Academy Award and BAFTA nominations.
Diane Keaton, with her best actress Oscar for ‘Annie Hall’ in 1978. Pic: AP
Her best actress Oscar was for the Woody Allen film Annie Hall, which is said to be loosely based on her life.
She appeared in several other Allen projects, including Manhattan, as well as all three Godfather movies, in which she played Kay, the wife and then ex-wife of Marlon Brando’s son Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, opposite him as he descends into a life of crime and replaces his father in the family’s mafia empire.
‘Brilliant, beautiful’
The unexpected news was met with shock around the world.
Her First Wives Club co-star Bette Midler wrote on Instagram: “The brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary Diane Keaton has died. I cannot tell you how unbearably sad this makes me.
“She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star. What you saw was who she was … oh, la, lala!”
Actor Ben Stiller paid tribute on X, writing: “Diane Keaton. One of the greatest film actors ever. An icon of style, humor and comedy. Brilliant. What a person.”
Keaton was the kind of actor who helped make films iconic and timeless, from her “La-dee-da, la-dee-da” phrasing as Annie Hall, bedecked in the iconic necktie, bowler hat, vest and khakis, to her heartbreaking turn as Kay Adams, the woman unfortunate enough to join the Corleone family.
Keaton also frequently worked with Nancy Meyers, starting with 1987’s Baby Boom.
Their other films together included 1991’s Father of the Bride and its 1995 sequel, as well as 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give.
In 1996 she starred opposite Goldie Hawn and Midler in The First Wives Club, about three women whose husbands had left them for younger women.
More recently she collaborated with Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen and Candice Bergen on the Book Club films.
Keaton never married. She adopted a daughter, Dexter, in 1996 and a son, Duke, four years later.
Sky News has contacted Keaton’s agent for a comment.
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