Month: November 2018

Chris Meledandri is Hollywood’s most reluctant mogul. With Jeffrey Katzenberg selling DreamWorks and John Lasseter forced out at Disney over harassment allegations, the founder of Illumination Entertainment is the last person standing among the trio of industry animation titans. Whereas Lasseter for decades cut a larger-than-life figure at Pixar’s sprawling campus in Emeryville, Calif., dominating
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MEXICO CITY —  Los Cabos Film Festival’s Mexico Primero section is intended to encourage and promote both up-and-coming and against-the-grain Mexican filmmakers. Five films make up this year’s edition of Mexico Primero, spanning from intimate indie dramas to thrillers to fantasy and horror. Each film offers something unique to the slate, while sharing an almost
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MEXICO CITY  — Capricci Films, the French producer on Argentine director Pablo Agüero’s upcoming comedy-horror project “Sangria,” will be joined by the newly formed, all-female Mexican production company Calouma Films. “Sangria” turns on Xavier, a carefree Canadian on vacation in Mexico who visits the worship space of a pagan saint. There, he meets beautiful Flor,
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The sale of Endemol Shine is off, Variety has learned. Senior staff members at the production and distribution giant were told this week that the company’s co-owners, 21st Century Fox and Apollo Global Management, have decided to suspend the process, a source with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday. With the sale shelved, Fox’s 50%
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Sean Hannity took the stage at President Trump’s final midterm election rally in Missouri, and called the media covering the event “fake news.” “Promises made, promises kept,” Hannity told the crowd in Cape Girardeau, repeating one of the slogans Trump has used in the rallies he’s staged across the country in advance of Tuesday’s vote. On
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November 5, 2018 6:14PM PT Focus Features has acquired worldwide rights to “Street Gang,” Marilyn Agrelo’s documentary exploring the “Sesame Street” phenomenon. HBO has acquired U.S. rights, Variety has learned. Introduced to buyers at the AFM by the Exchange, “Street Gang” is partly based on Michael Davis’ best-selling book of the same name published in
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WASHINGTON — Entertainment figures canvassed precincts, tweeted out last-minute endorsements, rallied millennials and, most of all, urged people to vote in a midterm election characterized by former President Barack Obama as perhaps “the most important of our lifetimes.” In a sharp contrast to 2016, few Democratic Hollywood figures were publicly predicting outcomes, even as pollsters see
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Before arriving at its current title, Danish director Bille August’s English-Mandarin WWII film “In Harm’s Way” was released in Britain as “The Hidden Soldier,” and premiered at 2017’s Shanghai Intl. Film Festival as “The Chinese Widow.” Why the film would reject two prosaic yet descriptive English-language titles for an equally prosaic yet randomly applied one
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November 5, 2018 3:18PM PT Variety Executive Editor Debra Birnbaum will be leaving her post of four and a half years to join Amazon as director of awards. Her last day at Variety will be Nov. 23. Birnbaum has led Variety’s TV team and coverage since joining the news organization in 2014, serving both as editor
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