Month: December 2020

Jamie Bell and Margaret Qualley will portray the legendary dance pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the biopic “Fred & Ginger” for Amazon Studios and Automatik. Bell and Qualley will also produce. Bell showed his skills as a dancer in his breakout performance in 2000’s “Billy Elliot.” Qualley has performed extensively as a dancer,

Two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks and Oscar-nominated director Paul Greengrass have teamed up again for Universal’s Western “News of the World,” one of the biggest studio films in the awards race. The duo last worked together in 2013’s “Captain Phillips,” which ended up with a best picture nomination. Like an all-American game of baseball,

Lionsgate is closing multiple international deals with Amazon for the Jennifer Lopez–Armie Hammer comedy “Shotgun Wedding.” The project stars Lopez as Darcy and Hammer as Tom, a couple who gathers their families together for a destination wedding. Things start to go south, however, after the two get cold feet. But that’s not the worst thing about

“Education.” That’s as good a title as any for the final episode of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” project — a series of five features, some little more than an hour, designed to educate and inform audiences about the experience of London’s West Indian immigrant population, about the expectations of assimilation raised by a white-majority country

Amazon’s “Sound of Metal” is a piece of terrific filmmaking — and its achievements are even more impressive considering Hollywood’s depictions of deafness in the past. “Sound of Metal,” directed by Darius Marder, stars Riz Ahmed as a heavy-metal drummer who begins to lose his hearing. The film has a three-act structure: Attempts by drummer

In the new indie film “Promising Young Woman,” set for a Christmas Day release, production designer Michael Perry plays with color to show the lightness and darkness of the main character’s life. That meant using bold hues to portray an emboldened Cassie, the film’s protagonist, played by Carey Mulligan, who drops out of med school

FKA Twigs has sued her ex-boyfriend, Shia LaBeouf, accusing the actor of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress. The musician, who filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, and the actor had dated for about one year in 2018 and 2019, after working together on the film, “Honey Boy.” “Shia LaBeouf hurts

Cinematographer Matthew Libatíque has become known for his signature use of anamorphic lenses and working with light to add realism to his images. But for Ryan Murphy’s “The Prom,” the screen adaptation of the 2018 Broadway musical that premieres Dec. 11 on Netflix, he changed the approach. This time, he went with spherical lenses because

Filmmakers all use the same tools, more or less, but do so with endlessly varied methods, says cinematographer Roger Deakins. That idea drove the master cinematographer, who won Academy Awards for Denis Villeneuve’s “Bladerunner 2049” and Sam Mendes’ “1917,” to launch with his wife James Deakins the buzzy behind-the-scenes podcast Team Deakins, a streaming chat

Shares of Disney popped 8% Friday morning, as investors cheered the Mouse House’s monster-size content flex outlined at its 2020 investor day for stepped-up push to accelerate its global direct-to-consumer streaming offensive. In early trading, Disney stock was trading at $167.13 per share, pushing the company’s market cap to over $300 billion. Netflix shares were

As the recently approved Pfizer/BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine began rolling out in the U.K. this week, the prevailing mood across the film and TV industry was one of cautious optimism. The breakthrough could be, quite literally, the shot in the arm needed to return to pre-COVID strength — as long as other government and industry support

Award-winning and deeply divisive South Korean film director Kim Ki-duk has died of COVID-19-related complications while on a visit to Latvia. Variety has confirmed Kim’s death with sources in Estonia who were working with him on a new project. The director died of coronavirus in a hospital in the Latvian capital of Riga on Thursday.

Japanese period drama film “Wife of a Spy” will get a release in U.S. cinemas early in 2021 through distributor Kino Lorber. The film earned its creator Kurosawa Kiyoshi the silver lion as best director at the Venice festival in September. The film reteams Kurosawa with actress Aoi Yu, who previously starred in his “Journey

Superhero movies have become so pervasive since the turn of the millennium that they’ve spurred a whole subgenre of films subverting their formulas — primarily low-budget efforts like “Special,” “Super” and “Defendor,” but also major-studio projects “Joker” and “Hancock.” All share an interest in peeling back the mask, exploring the antisocial, delusional-fantasy side of superpowers

Movies are constantly coming up with reasons to keep lovers apart for long enough to convince audiences that they genuinely belong together, but “Wild Mountain Thyme” may be the first film in which those obstacles are never made clear. Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) is beautiful. Anthony Reilly (Jamie Dornan) is beautiful. These two Irish neighbors