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Aaron Taylor-Johnson Joins Brad Pitt In Sony’s Action Pic ‘Bullet Train’

EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Taylor-Johnson is set to join the ensemble of the Sony action-thriller Bullet Train starring Brad Pitt. Joey King and Andrew Koji are also on board.

Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch will direct and also supervise the script, which will be written by Zak Olkewicz.

The film is based on the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by best-selling author Kotaro Isaka. Ryosuke Saegusa and Yuma Terada of CTB Inc., who represent Isaka and the IP, are executive producers on the project.

Kelly McCormick will produce Bullet Train through 87North, along with Antoine Fuqua. Kat Samick is exec producing and Brittany Morrissey is the executive overseeing the project for Sony Pictures.

Plot details are vague though Taylor-Johnson is expected to play one of the four assassins in the film along with Pitt and King.

Best known for starring roles in Kick-Ass and Godzilla, Taylor-Johnson has become one of the busier leading men in the industry and has a couple big projects ahead of him. He currently has the Christopher Nolan thriller Tenet opposite John David Washington with the Kingsman prequel The King’s Man.

His other recent credits include A Million Little Pieces, David McKenzie’s Outlaw King, Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, which he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for a BAFTA Award, Avengers: Age Of Ultron

He is repped by WME, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and legal Sloane, Offer, Weber and Dern.

Courteney Cox, Eva Longoria, Aaron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen Creating Custom Desserts for Charity

They are among the stars curating custom desserts in partnership with Los Angeles eateries as part of an America’s Sweetest initiative from Off the Menu with Beverly Center and DoorDash to support EBMRF on National Dessert Day.

Courteney Cox, Eva Longoria, John Stamos, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Bridget Moynahan and Elizabeth Olsen are among the stars showing off their sweet teeth for charity.

Foodie app Off the Menu, Beverly Center and DoorDash announced today the launch of a partnership called America’s Sweetest, a charitable bake sale to support the Epidermolysis Bullosa Medical Research Foundation (EBMRF). The one-day initiative is scheduled for Oct. 14 in honor of National Dessert Day, and it finds a roster of names teaming up with local eateries to custom desserts.

Pre-order begins Oct. 9 with day-of pick up on Oct. 14 available at Beverly Center or via DoorDash delivery throughout the Los Angeles area. Dessert boxes cost $125 each with proceeds donated directly to the EBMRF. Individual desserts will be also be made available at the eatery location the day of the event.

The lineup includes: Cox with Little Pine; Haylie Duff with Lou, the French on the Block; Longoria with Porto’s Bakery; Moynahan with Joan’s on Third; Olsen with Just What I Kneaded; Roselyn Sánchez and Eric Winter with Baked by ShaSha; John and Caitlin Stamos with Valerie Confections; and Sam and Aaron Taylor Johnson with Gjusta.

“We’re thrilled to have Off the Menu support EBMRF and create a program in America’s Sweetest we think can continue to grow over the years while sharing our mission of raising funds for this disorder,” said Andrea Joseph, who launched the foundation with husband Paul Joseph to help support research and finding a cure for the condition which their son Brandon has battled his entire life. 

Added Off the Menu founder Lawrence Longo: “We know that food can act as a way to connect and educate people. We’re thrilled to be able to create an event like America’s Sweetest that will allow us to raise money for EBMRF while putting together a ‘care package’ that any food lover and especially those with a sweet tooth will obsess over.”

Imagined by Off The Menu, the initiative follows its Burger Showdown and Wing Showdown competitions held over the summer. As part of America’s Sweetest, Off the Menu will host videos from each celebrity participant on its website and platform. More information about the initiative can be found here.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Steve Pemberton Will Star in West End Staging of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman

Initial casting has been announced for the London production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, which begins a 12-week engagement July 24 at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Opening is scheduled for August 5.

Golden Globe winner Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Nocturnal Animals, Nowhere Boy, The Wall) and BAFTA winner Steve Pemberton (The League of Gentlemen, Psychoville) will star with additional casting to be announced. Matthew Dunster directs the first-ever West End production of McDonagh’s Olivier-winning The Pillowman, which was seen at the National Theatre in 2003.

In a statement McDonagh said, “The Pillowman is a play that’s always been very close to my heart, in terms of its combination of the darkest of dark comedy with its exploration of the nature of story-telling itself. It’s a play that I haven’t wanted to have staged in London until I could find the perfect director and the ideal cast for it, and having worked with Matthew previously on Hangmen, and been an admirer of Steve and Aaron’s work for many years, I feel it’s the perfect time to find out what a whole new generation makes of this peculiar tale.”

In the play, a writer in a totalitarian state is questioned by the authorities about a spate of murders that bear similarities to his short stories. Is this life imitating art or something more sinister?

Empire Street Productions presents The Pillowman and will offer a Pay What You Can ticket pricing throughout the whole run. Producer James Bierman said, ”I really hope that with this play, this cast, and for this production, we can welcome both established and new playgoers into the West End, and that this pricing accessibility will give those audiences the thrill of live theatre at its very best.”

Oscar-winning writer McDonagh’s Hangmen begins previews on Broadway February 28 at the Golden Theatre.

Harper Bazaar Interviews Aaron & Sam Taylor-Johnson

Between lingering kisses and adoring sidelong glances, artist turned filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson and her dashing actor husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, open up to friend James Frey (whose book A Million Little Pieces they have adapted for the big screen) about the coup de foudre they experienced when they first met—and how they keep that spark burning bright more than a decade later.

She was a world-renowned artist, her work hanging in museums around the world, selling for outrageous sums in galleries and at auction, the mother of two young daughters living in London and spending weekends in France or the English countryside. She had also survived cancer twice. She was healthy, brilliant, beautiful, and successful beyond her wildest dreams. She was about to direct her first feature film. Her life was full. Or so she thought.

“I wasn’t expecting anything that day. Just to see a bunch of actors pretending to be John Lennon.” He was an actor, working since he was six. He’d been onstage, in films, on television, successful enough to get by, but the breakthrough hadn’t come. He’d been preparing for this audition for six weeks. If he got the role, it would change his life.

“I remember it very, very clearly. I know exactly what she was wearing. This white shirt that she still has, that I love. It definitely changed my life, though not in the way I expected.”

“We were very professional through the entire film.”

“No funny business at all.”

“But everyone on set knew. And as soon as we finished, he told me he was going to marry me. We had never been on a date, or even kissed.”

“And a year to the minute after we met, exactly one year to the minute, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me.”

“In the 10 years we’ve been together, we’ve only been apart for maybe two or three days.” “And those were the worst days of those 10 years.”

Sam Taylor-Johnson and Aaron Taylor-Johnson both laugh, share a lingering kiss. They’re in the courtyard of their lush, art-filled home, a sprawling Spanish-style villa at the foot of a canyon in the Hollywood Hills, hidden behind a 12-foot wall at the end of a dead-end street. They have one of Hollywood’s great love stories, one that rivals those of Bogie and Bacall, Taylor and Burton, Steve McQueen and Ali.

MacGraw, but one that is somehow more beautiful because it hasn’t been played out in the public eye. They met in 2008 during the casting for Nowhere Boy, the critically acclaimed John Lennon biopic that Sam directed and Aaron starred in as the teenage Lennon. They now share four daughters and live between L.A. and wherever one of them might be shooting a film. “We live behind walls,” Aaron says. “Literally, figuratively, and deliberately. You’ll never see our children or any of our most personal moments on social media or in the press. We have our professional lives and our life together, and we keep them apart.” Except when those things intersect, as they did when they met, and in 2018, when they made my book A Million Little Pieces into a film. “We always wanted to replicate that experience, to do something that had that type of intensity, to make another film together,” Sam says, taking Aaron’s hand.

Aaron smiles at her. It’s a true smile—a big smile. One filled with love and respect and admiration. “We had a few opportunities. But nothing felt right. Or something bigger would come along. For Sam, Fifty Shades [of Grey], or Nocturnal Animals for me. But it was always there. What are we going to do together?”

Sam had read A Million Little Pieces in 2003, when it was first released. And she had tracked the various attempts to film it over the years. “I had just moved to CAA. And my agent, good old John Garvey, called me and asked if I had ever read it. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s what I want to do. Why, what do you know?’ And he said, ‘The rights have just been reverted back to the author, and I thought it might be up your alley.’ I laughed and said, ‘I have the author’s e-mail here. Just give me a second, I’m going to call you back.’ Twenty minutes later, we were on the phone, and you gave me the rights. And Aaron and I had our project.”

Though neither were writers, they decided to write the screenplay together. As they speak about their process, they don’t look at me but at each other, clearly enamored. “We had a studio opposite David Hockney’s place where I was making art, and it became our writing office,” says Sam, to which Aaron immediately responds, “We had cards everywhere, and we were structurally trying to lay out the story.” To which Sam, smiling widely, says, “Aaron would be sitting at his desk, and he could work for 10, 12, 14 hours straight.” Says Aaron, “Sam was like a caged tiger, pacing and throwing out idea after idea.”

Once they had a script, they found financiers, cast the film with Aaron playing the lead alongside Billy Bob Thornton, Charlie Hunnam, Juliette Lewis, Giovanni Ribisi, and Odessa Young, and started shooting at a college campus in Pomona, about an hour east of L.A. “Initially, the hardest thing was that it was the first time both Mommy and Daddy were working at the same time,” Sam says. And with a tight schedule of 20 days, they worked long hours with both cast and crew doing the film at cut rates. “The actors and crew were saying, ‘One for the soul, we’ll do the next one for the money, this one for the soul.’ That felt like the spirit of it.”

And with the film being released this past August in the U.K. and coming to theaters in the U.S. in December, I ask them if they want to do it again. Both of them laugh, glance at each other, still holding hands. Aaron smiles. “You want to do it again, right?” She says, “It was the best thing we’ve ever done.” Aaron nods. “Even better because we did it together.” She agrees. “The best.” I ask where they see themselves in 20 years. They each look to the other to respond, then Aaron turns back to me. “A remote island somewhere.” Sam nods. “Maybe the Hebrides?”

Aaron looks back at her. “Realistically, hopefully still doing this, but only like we did on this one, with each other.”

Sam looks at him for a long moment, taking him in. “I love you.”

He leans in, kisses her. “I love you too.”

They keep kissing. Doesn’t matter that I’m there, that anyone would be there. They keep kissing. Love.

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