Month: January 2021

Gordy Haab’s award-winning scores for the video games “Star Wars: Battlefront” and “Star Wars: Battlefront II” are about to be released by Walt Disney Records. “Battlefront” is slated to hit digital retail and streaming services at midnight Eastern time tonight, 9 pm Pacific time; “Battlefront II” will land on Feb. 5. The first “Battlefront,” released
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The motion picture academy has announced the animated, documentary and international features eligible for Oscar consideration. Some of the animated and documentary contenders have not yet had their required qualifying release. Each of them must fulfill the requirement to advance in the voting process. In the documentary feature realm, a record 238 docs are among
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The brand remains strong. Showtime’s critically acclaimed late-night sensation “Desus & Mero” returns for a third season on Jan. 31, and continues its twice-a-week Sunday-and-Thursday schedule after that. Variety spoke to hosts Desus Nice and The Kid Mero about what to expect as their show returns in a post-President Trump world. What did you think
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Legendary musician and music scholar Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is bringing his musical expertise to the movie business, making his directorial debut with “Summer of Soul … (Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. “I’m very excited. This has been a long time coming and there’s been
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Caroline Yim and Zach Iser have joined WME as partners and co-heads of the music department’s hip-hop/R&B team. They were previously at CAA, which they’d joined in 2018 after several years at ICM. A rep for WME declined to reveal which artists might be making the jump with them, but artists the duo has worked
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The 2021 edition of the Sundance Film Festival will look very different. With the coronavirus pandemic raging, Sundance has opted for a virtual gathering, following in the footsteps of the Toronto Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. But Sundance has made important technical innovations that its leaders claim will re-create the communal atmosphere
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Revelations that Canadian director Michelle Latimer’s self-proclaimed Indigenous roots may be nonexistent — an inconvenient truth that led to her film “Inconvenient Indian” being pulled from Sundance — have become a rallying cry for the global Indigenous film collective that the festival and its institute have been fostering for years. Throughout this community, which spans
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During their conversation for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, presented by Amazon Studios, Steven Yeun and Riz Ahmed talked intensely about such topics as the immigrant experience as reflected in “Minari,” how Ahmed learned sign language for “Sound of Metal” and the idea of “code switching” — how, as actors of Asian descent, they’ve been
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Academy Award and Emmy-winner Nicole Kidman will executive produce a television series based on Maria Sødahl’s European Cinemas Label-winning “Hope” under her Blossom Films banner. “Hope” is currently in the running as the Norweigan entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 93rd Academy Awards. The rights to the film’s adaptation were acquired
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Shout! Studios has taken North American rights to the action thriller “Fire,” and Russian production and distribution powerhouse Central Partnership has closed a host of other territories, the company announced during the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Alexey Nuzhniy, “Fire” is a splashy, big-budget actioner about heroic smokejumpers racing against disaster. Since its Christmas Eve
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Warner Chappell Music, the publishing arm of Warner Music Group, has named David Woirhaye as the company’s new executive vice president and global chief financial officer, effectively immediately. In his new role, he will report into Guy Moot, Co-Chair and CEO and Carianne Marshall, Co-Chair and COO. According to the announcement, in partnership with Warner Chappell’s leadership team, Woirhaye will
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