Month: February 2022

With Oscar nominations just around the corner — they’ll be announced on Feb. 8 — pundits wonder if Academy members will embrace a superhero movie by giving a best picture nod to “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Variety’s film awards editor Clayton Davis wrote in a Dec. 23 column headlined “Can ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Swing

Roland Emmerich, the blockbuster filmmaker behind “Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow” and the upcoming “Moonfall,” credited “Star Wars” and superhero movies pumped out by Marvel and DC as “ruining” the film industry. Emmerich’s “Moonfall,” backed by Lionsgate and made on a reported budget in the $140 million range, is the increasingly-rare example of an

The small and powerful Sundance drama “A Love Song” has found worldwide distribution in Sony’s Stage 6 Films and Bleecker Street, Variety has learned exclusively. The acclaimed two-hander about love, loss and loneliness is led by Dale Dickey (“Winter’s Bone,” “Hell or High Water”) and honorary Academy Award winner Wes Studi (“Hostiles,” “The Last of

Welcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.” Actor John Bradley is still defending the controversial “Game of Thrones” series finale against its very harsh critics, even more than two years after the show ended. “It is highly unlikely that we were ever going to please everybody,” the actor, who played Samwell Tarly on the long-running

NBCUniversal announced Wednesday the launch of its California Below-the-Line Traineeship, which gives on-set experience and mentorship to underrepresented talent behind the camera. The program debuted with six trainees last year on the Southern California set of Jordan Peele’s “Nope,” which is being produced by Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. “In line with our efforts to provide more

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) will reveal its nominations tomorrow and we’re expecting anarchy, at least in the acting categories. Beefing up its membership considerably over the last few years, and instituting jury methods to the voting process in performance and director categories last year, yielded an unexpected field of contenders

Following its premiere at this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival, Aubrey Plaza’s crime thriller “Emily the Criminal” has been sold to Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment. The movie is slated to release exclusively in theaters in 2022. Redbox Entertainment has home entertainment rights. An exact release date has not been scheduled yet. John Patton Ford

Dolly Parton and Kelly Clarkson have joined forces with producer Shane McAnally to record a very different version of the Parton classic “9 to 5” as a duet for an upcoming documentary, “Still Working 9 to 5,” just announced for a premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March. The documentary’s premiere at

Twice thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the SXSW Film Festival is making a major return to form this year — featuring premium studio projects from Sandra Bullock and Pete Davidson, notable indies and docs, and a closing night premiere from the new season of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta.” In 2020, the Austin-based conference was the first

Two VR films from Taiwan have been selected to play at the XR Experience section of the South by Southwest (SXSW) content festival, organizers announced on Wednesday. Concert film “Beatday – the Beginning – Mini VR Concert’ and stop-motion animation “The Sick Rose” have been hits on the festival scene, since they premiered at last

Channing Tatum and his producing partner Reid Carolin aren’t just the brains — and brawn — behind “Magic Mike.” They’ve built up their company Free Association into a place to go for innovative storytelling, including the road trip movie “Dog” (which opens on Feb. 18), which they co-directed; the Starz TV series “Step Up: Highwater”;