This week, ABC announced that there would be a host for the 2022 Academy Awards. Shortly after, reports circulated that Pete Davidson has been in talks with Oscars producers to host. Despite press reports, Variety hears from multiple sources that Davidson will not be hosting the Oscars. An insider says an informal conversation took place
Month: January 2022
Chip Monck may be the second-best known behind-the-scenes person from the original 1969 Woodstock festival, thanks to his having been drafted as a master of ceremonies for the daytime parts of the event on top of his night job as its lighting designer. The festival is most associated, of course, with co-founder Michael Lang, with
Indie icon Cat Power — a.k.a. Chan Marshall — has been releasing fine albums of original material for more than 25 years, but imaginative covers have always been a big part of her sound: Her sparse debut LP, “Dear Sir,” which featured a song written by Tom Waits and one by This Kind of Punishment,
“Anna Delvey is a masterpiece, bitches!” Julia Garner yells in the trailer for Netflix’s upcoming series “Inventing Anna,” which depicts the downfall of the real-life scamming socialite. The nine-episode limited series from Shonda Rhimes, premiering on Feb. 11, chronicles New York Magazine’s investigation into Delvey as she awaits trial for grand larceny and theft of
A revival of “Justified” has been ordered to series at FX, with Timothy Olyphant set to reprise the role of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Variety exclusively reported that the project was in the works in March 2021. The new iteration of the drama series is inspired by the Elmore Leonard novel “City Primeval: High Noon
Clint Arlis, who competed on Season 11 of “The Bachelorette,” died on Tuesday. He was 34. Arlis’ sister Taylor Lulek confirmed the news on Facebook, writing, “It is with great sadness to tell you that my family has lost my best friend and older brother Clint on the morning of January 11th. Please respect our
“The Santa Clause” franchise is being continued as a limited series at Disney Plus with Tim Allen returning to star as Scott Calvin, Variety has learned. In the series, Scott Calvin is on the brink of his 65th birthday and realizing that he can’t be Santa forever. He’s starting to lose a step in his
The pandemic may have completely up-ended the music industry’s traditional business model, but artists found all kinds of ways to make many millions of dollars in 2021 — and the big winners were nearly all white and male, according to a “10 Highest Paid Musicians” list published by Rolling Stone on Friday. The list, created
MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, had a very, very good 2021 — the YouTube maestro pulled down $54 million in gross revenue last year, more than any YouTube creator in history, according to new estimates by Forbes magazine. Coming in behind MrBeast was Jake Paul, the controversial YouTuber/boxer, who earned an estimated $45 million last year;
Distributor, streamer and production company MUBI has acquired sales and production companies The Match Factory and Match Factory Productions. The Match Factory’s management team will stay in place to lead operations and focus on its slate as well as deals and projects already in development and keep its offices in Berlin and Cologne. It will
“Scream” scared up $3.5 million in Thursday previews, a solid result for a franchise that is comfortably in its third decade. The Paramount and Spyglass Media slasher reboot is on pace to gross a bloody good $30 million in its opening weekend, buoyed by strong reviews and a passionate fanbase. It also helps that the
The shortened in-person Berlin Film Festival (Feb. 10-16) has revealed a raft of high profile shows that will participate in keenly anticipated annual fixture Berlinale Series. The strand opens with Amazon Prime Video Argentinian spy series “Yosi, the Regretful Spy” and also includes HBO Max Swedish friendship comedy series “Lust”; Lone Scherfig’s TV2 Danish maternity
Heidi Klum is making music. The multi-media superstar dropped a new single today, “Chai Tea With Heidi,” a dance track featuring Snoop Dogg. “Anyone who knows me, knows I love hip-hop,” Klum says. “Working with Snoop Dogg has always been a dream of mine.” The tune will serve as the theme song for Season 17
Late Thursday night, a workaholic friend who’d promised to finally take a real vacation texted a series of photos of herself on a sun-kissed beach, enjoying exotic drinks and a tropical sunset. “You proud of me?” she wrote, then followed immediately with the real topic that brought her out of her vacation reverie: “Why is
Paul Thomas AndersonDirector-Screenwriter-Producer, “Licorice Pizza”For Anderson’s ninth feature, the filmmaker returned to the San Fernando Valley to chronicle the lives of a young man and woman in the 1970s. When asked in a Variety cover story why he chooses this location frequently for his films, Anderson replied: “Comfort. Joy. I like the way it looks.
In the past year, thanks to vaccines and an abundance of caution, in-person events began to resume throughout the season. It began with Emmy FYC panels, usually filled to around 20% of their normal capacity and held outdoors. But as the year went on, it was starting to seem as if premieres, screenings and events
Though critics analyze and express opinions on stories, they are also storytellers themselves. And film festivals are full of stories — both on and off screen. As 2021 saw the world begin to return to in-person film festivals, we asked our chief film critics about some of their festival memories, past and present. Owen Gleiberman
In upcoming biopic “Golda,” Helen Mirren plays former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when Israel was invaded by a coalition of Arab states on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. While Mirren is not Jewish, “Golda” is directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guy Nattiv (“Skin”), who is both
One thing that Hollywood definitely knows how to do is tell a cinematic fairy tale. Whether cut from real life or a work of fiction, filmmakers have long believed that sometimes a story requires bending reality to take flight. In other instances, storytellers have looked to the real world when searching for inspirational tales that
The Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film has unveiled the names of the four filmmakers who have been selected to participate in this year’s edition. Selected fellows for the 13th edition of the program are Lin Que Ayoung, an award-winning writer, director and producer who started her career as a hip-hop performer and lyricist; Pepi
BOX OFFICE The International Union of Cinemas (UNIC), the industry body representing the interests of European cinema trade associations and operators across 39 territories, has called for all stakeholders in European and global cinema industry to support the sector as its recovery from the impact of COVID-19 accelerates into 2022. The release of “Spider-Man: No
Wes Craven’s “Scream” franchise has no shortage of brutal kills, but it turns out one of the craziest bloodbaths never made it into the franchise. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, original “Scream” screenwriter Kevin Williamson detailed an extended 15-minute fight scene between Ghostface and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) that he wrote for the
Yuri Bykov’s 2014 Russian-language film “The Fool” has been acquired by MGM’s Orion Television to be adapted into an English-language series. The film follows Dima Nikitin (Artyom Bystrov), an ordinary honest plumber who suddenly decides to face the corrupt system of local politics in order to save the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old
Rebel Wilson will host the BAFTA Awards in March. Wilson said: “I am very honoured to be hosting the EE British Academy Film Awards in March, where Covid will no longer exist because it will clearly have been canceled by then. It’s going to be so much fun! I don’t wanna put any pressure on
The BBC is renowned for its sober and staid news executives. Most are invariably educated at Oxford or Cambridge and rise up through the ranks over several decades. But that’s not the case anymore. Last week, to raised eyebrows throughout the U.K. broadcast sector, it was announced that the new head of BBC News, answering
Ubisoft, the French video-game powerhouse behind franchises like “Assassin’s Creed,” “Far Cry” and “Watch Dogs,” has partnered with Pathé to develop a location-based VR escape game based on Jean-Jacques Annaud’s upcoming IMAX-shot docudrama “Notre-Dame on Fire.” The one-hour experience – which shares the title of Annaud’s blockbuster – will put players into the boots and
Regal Cinemas owner Cineworld Group has an accelerating recovery in group revenues in the second half of 2021. The recovery has been driven by a slate of movies including “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Venom,” “Black Widow,” “Dune,” “Free Guy,” “Eternals” and “No Time to Die,” Cineworld said
When Vikash Bhai read the script for “Limbo” — Ben Sharrock’s film about refugees stuck on a Scottish island desperately awaiting permission to stay in the United Kingdom — he was struck by the “honesty, the heart and the humor.” While Bhai was raised in Leicester, England, the character of Farhad, a pop culture-loving Afghani,
Analyzing the commercial failure of a movie 30 years after its release might not do much, if anything, to offset the film’s financial losses. In the case of Luis Puenzo’s failed big-budget 1992 adaptation of Albert Camus’ “The Plague,” perhaps there’s a streamer presentation that might perform a minor financial resuscitation on its P&L for
Todd Patrick Whiting, a longtime NBCUniversal executive, died Jan. 4 of complications from pneumonia and COVID-19. He was 45. Whiting was a New York-based distribution and acquisitions executive who helped negotiate some of the key content licensing deals that provided the foundation for NBCUniversal’s Peacock streamer, including blockbuster deals for rights to “The Office” and
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