HBO Max sets July 21, 2022 premiere date for documentary series The Last Movie Stars Directed by four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke. The six-part documentary focuses on the lives and careers of Hollywood icons Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, delving into their 50-year marriage with never-before-seen interviews with friends and family members.
“It is an honor to share the inspiring life and love story of Joan and Paul with audiences this summer. I’m especially thrilled that the project we’ve put so much heart and soul into has its home at HBO Max, a platform known for celebrating and championing documentary art,” said director Ethan Hawke.
Martin Scorsese executive produces with Amy Entelis, CNN Worldwide’s executive vice president for talent and content development, and Courtney Sexton, senior vice president of CNN Films. Producers include Emily Wachtel and Lisa Long Adler of Nook House, Ryan Hawke and Adam Gibbs of Under the Influence Productions. Hamilton Leithauser composed the original score.
HBO Max released the following details on the six-part documentary:
“from the center The Last Movie Stars is a long-abandoned project that Newman started with friend and screenwriter Stewart Stern. At Newman’s request, Stern interviewed close friends, family and artistic collaborators Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, Karl Malden, Sidney Pollack, Gore Vidal, Jacqueline Witte, Joan Woodward and others for a planned memoir. Newman was also interviewed by Stern. He discusses his youth, his first marriage with Witte, his romance and life with Woodward, his personal demons and the gut-wrenching loss of his son, Scott.
In addition to archival interviews with Woodward and Newman, Hawke included actors Karen Allen, George Clooney, Oscar Isaacs, Latanya Richardson Jackson, Zoe Kazan, Laura Linney, Sam Rockwell and others in voice segments of the original written interviews. The Last Movie Stars, Hawke interviewed some of Newman’s daughters for insight into their parents, and Hawke’s contemporary interviews with Sally Field and Martin Scorsese explore what made Woodward and Newman’s eccentric careers, and the relationship, so inspiring. The result, delivered in six parts, is a thoughtful, revealing documentary of living life well and fully.
Woodward and Newman are enduring symbols of smoldering coolness. Their joint and individual credits include cool hand luke, hood, three faces of eve, Victory, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, industrialist, the glass Menagerie, Rachel, Rachel, even more. Although their intensely romantic relationship was a perennial obsession of fans and the Hollywood press, they successfully refocused their fame toward their arts, racing, social justice and human rights, and sought a demanding career balanced with a fulfilling marriage. During their lives together, they also raised hundreds of millions of dollars for causes they believed in, and were active in civil rights and the environment, inspiring other artists to follow in their footsteps. ,
