HBO Max has set a July 21, 2022 premiere date for the documentary series The Last Movie Stars directed by four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke. The six-part docuseries 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’s an honor to get to share Joanne and Paul’s inspiring life and love story with audiences this summer. I’m especially thrilled that a project we’ve poured so much heart and soul into now has its home at HBO Max, a platform known for celebrating and championing the documentary artform,” stated director Ethan Hawke.
Martin Scorsese executive produces along with CNN Worldwide executive vice president for talent and content development Amy Entelis and CNN Films senior vice president Courtney Sexton. Producers include Nook House’s Emily Wachtel and Lisa Long Adler, Under the Influence Productions’ Ryan Hawke, and Adam Gibbs. Hamilton Leithauser composed the original score.
HBO Max released the following details on the six-part docuseries:
“Central to The Last Movie Stars is a long-abandoned project that Newman commissioned from 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, Joanne Woodward, and others for a planned memoir. Newman was also interviewed by Stern. They discussed 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 enlisted actors Karen Allen, George Clooney, Oscar Isaac, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Zoe Kazan, Laura Linney, Sam Rockwell, and others to voice segments of the original transcribed interviews for The Last Movie Stars. Hawke also interviewed some of Newman’s daughters for insights into their parents and Hawke’s contemporary interviews with Sally Field and Martin Scorsese explore what made Woodward’s and Newman’s singular careers, and relationship, so inspiring. The result, delivered in six parts, is a thoughtful, revealing documentary of lives well and fully lived.
Woodward and Newman are enduring symbols of smoldering cool. Their joint and individual credits include Cool Hand Luke, Hud, The Three Faces of Eve, Winning, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Hustler, The Glass Menagerie, Rachel, Rachel, and more. Though their intense romantic relationship was a perennial obsession of fans and Hollywood press, they successfully refocused their fame towards their art, racing, social justice, and human rights, and balanced demanding careers with a fulfilling marriage. During the course of 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 legions of other artists to follow in their footsteps.”
