How Jennifer Lopez Documentary ‘Halftime’ evolved to tell better Story About super Bowl reveal, ‘Hustlers’ Oscar Snub - Hollywood Reporter

The producers of the Netflix movie that debuted last week on the Tribeca festival clarify how after at first planning to film the singer-actress on the conclusion of her Vegas residency as she was about to show 50, "the entire movie modified" amid new tendencies.

'Halftime' Courtesy of Netflix

The title of Jennifer Lopez's Halftime documentary, now streaming on Netflix, refers no longer only to how the movie explores her preparations for her 2020 tremendous Bowl performance with Shakira however additionally to Lopez looking forward to the second half of her existence as she turns 50.

"I believe like I'm simply getting all started," Lopez says in the movie as she celebrates her fiftieth birthday. And later she muses about extra things she hopes to accomplish in her life.

really, when producer Dave Broome first got concerned with the movie that would become Halftime, many of the most massive moments in Lopez's expert lifestyles from the previous few years, which function prominently in the movie, hadn't even happened.

chatting with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Halftime's most beneficial at the 2022 Tribeca pageant closing week, Broome explained how filming began as Lopez "when she turned into coming to the end of her residency in Las Vegas questioning what's subsequent in her existence and we had no idea."

"Hustlers isn't on the table," Broome brought. "And nothing that turned into happening in her lifestyles that we've viewed now over the ultimate four years is some thing that we thought we'd be filming."

As Lopez made Hustlers and embarked on an awards crusade for her role, which alas ended along with her now not touchdown the Oscar nomination many anticipated she'd get, and as she become picked to co-headline the 2020 tremendous Bowl with Shakira, "the complete movie changed," Broome spoke of.

"It was a relentless fluidness [for four years]. You start with an overview and go, 'here's what we're going to do.' after which impulsively, 'What do you mean she's now starring in this movie where she's taking part in a stripper? What do you imply that's getting a possible Oscar nomination?' The great thing about making a documentary is none of this is scripted, it's precise life. So in case you're following it, you're chasing it and finding and constructing the story as you go," Broome stated. "i will be able to't let you know what number of edits we had. It's like, 'ok, here's the film.' 'Oh wait, that's no longer the movie as a result of this just happened.' 'Now here's the film.' 'Oh wait that's not it.'"

Lopez's producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas shared from the Tribeca stage how the task grew to be whatever thing larger.

"What started as a run and gun attempting to catch Jennifer celebrating her 50th birthday on the It's My celebration tour started to morph into something else when my accomplice Benny Medina saw that there changed into a larger story to inform," she mentioned as she introduced the film.

Oscar-nominated director Amanda Micheli was brought on close the conclusion of 2019 to form "hundreds and tons of of hours of archival photos and private footage" and "locate the story that hadn't been informed."

That method included roughly two years of edits amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with Micheli getting equipped for interviews as the world shut down in March 2020. As COVID restrictions lessened, the interviews started with Lopez and those close to her and Micheli says she changed into able to "find the story in the edit room."

"It changed into in fact an epic accomplishing and for me it ended up being a labor of love," she stated.

The resulting movie shows Lopez reflecting back on her existence in a good, inclined way, explaining at times how she had a low vanity as she changed into criticized.

"should you make a documentary and you delivery to seem returned at your life a distinct means, it's an emotional manner. It turned into like therapy truthfully," Micheli stated of her interviews with Lopez. "I consider she basically, searching again, admitted times when her shallowness became now not bulletproof and that was a shock to me because I all the time noticed her as so a success."

[The following paragraphs contain spoilers from Halftime.]

whereas the film does display her crying in bed and moments of frustration, Lopez is shown coping with the Oscar snub amid what seem like super Bowl rehearsals, as she tells her colleagues how she had a dream that she did get nominated and awoke to verify and found out it wasn't proper.

"The certainty is I definitely started to feel i used to be going to get nominated," she says in the movie. "I obtained my hopes up as a result of so many americans were telling me i'd be. after which it didn't turn up."

Halftime also leans into the political thought at the back of Lopez's halftime performance.

Early within the documentary, Lopez explains that whereas she's now not "into politics," she turned into living in a united states that she "didn't respect." She appears certainly upset concerning the migrant families separated beneath the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy at the Mexican border, adding that the tremendously-publicized photos of children in cages really caught with her.

"These motherfuckers act like every person's an immigrant who's attempting to sneak into the country and who's a crook, cause that's the narrative that Trump created, which is bullshit," Lopez is proven asserting. "a few of us were here for years, and a lot of those people are just respectable individuals who consider within the American dream — that's all they need."

The film also shows Lopez's group bristling at one of the most NFL's determination making including "greater-ups" within the league looking the cages eliminated the night before the tremendous Bowl and Lopez and Medina expressing frustration on the league making a choice on two Latina ladies to headline the halftime exhibit as an alternative of only 1 performer. Lopez, in particular, gets frustrated as she deals with the logistics of making an attempt to cut her reveal all the way down to six minutes for a 14-minute double-headlining show. It's in this discussion along with her tune director that she says having two tremendous Bowl performers became "the worst thought in the world." She earlier tells Shakira that if the NFL desired two headliners they should still have given them 20 minutes.

[Spoilers end]

Broome, who has made numerous projects for Netflix, felt the streamer made experience for the challenge as "a world platform for…a worldwide movie star."

nevertheless he was impressed that Netflix didn't instantly say yes to the chance of a Jennifer Lopez documentary.

He spoke of, "after I walked the challenge in [to Netflix] and i mentioned, 'I have a Jennifer Lopez documentary what do you think?' To their credit, they're now not like, 'Oh yeah, we're in, Dave, let's go.' The query was, 'extraordinary, what is it? What's the story you're going to inform? how can you piece it collectively? Who's the director?' What are we telling and what will we suppose we wish to do."

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