Month: April 2023

Elijah Wood is “fascinated” and “surprised” over Warner Bros. developing multiple new “Lord of the Rings” movies. The studio announced the plan in February. Wood, of course, played the hobbit Frodo in Peter Jackson’s original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which grossed $2.9 billion worldwide and remains one of cinema’s greatest fantasy achievements. “I’m
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Universal’s latest monster movie, the blood-sucking “Renfield,” is sinking its teeth into the domestic box office with $900,000 in Thursday previews. However, this modern take on Dracula won’t be able to drive a stake through the heart of last week’s box office champion, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” The animated, family-friendly video game adaptation will
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What’s it like turning down Tom Cruise? Just ask Nicholas Hoult. In a new interview with The Guardian, the “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Menu” star revealed that Cruise personally called him to join the “Mission: Impossible” franchise for its two-part finale, which will kick off this summer with the seventh installment, “Mission: Impossible
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Once pitted against each other as rivals, streamers and broadcasters have become unlikely allies in the face of increased competition and economic pressure following the pandemic and the launch of more content viewing platforms.  Even in France, where Netflix was referred to as the “devil” by France Televisions president Delphine Ernotte Cunci in a 2019
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Bolstered by a 40% cash rebate and a growing number of creators prepared to take risks, the Greek TV industry is riding high. Here’s a selection of the top Greek series on offer during MipTV: Cartes Postales From GreeceDirector: Georgios PapavasileiouWriter: Kallia PapadakiProducer: NEEDaFIXERBroadcaster: ERTA series of 12 stand-alone stories based on Hislop’s bestselling book
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Between the streaming wars and the pandemic, it’s been a topsy-turvy few years for Hollywood’s major studios.    Many aspects of the TV business have been turned inside-out by the subscription video-on-demand revolution. But now, as entertainment’s largest conglomerates face a perfect storm of financial pressures and macroeconomic uncertainty, there’s been a clear shift again
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Warning: This story contains spoilers from the “Love Is Blind” Season 4 finale, now streaming on Netflix. It’s never a dull moment on “Love Is Blind,” and Season 4 was no different. During the finale, which dropped on Netflix on Friday, it was time for the weddings. While viewers weren’t surprised by fan-favorite couple Tiffany
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MrBeast, who runs the most-subscribed individual channel on YouTube, has hit back against a suggestion that his friend and collaborator, Chris Tyson, is a becoming “nightmare” for the popular video creator because of Tyson’s hormone replacement therapy. MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, on Thursday responded on Twitter to someone who posted about a
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Japanese electronics giant, Sony has opened a virtual production studio in Shanghai, China, that it says can be used for shooting film, TV and commercials. The studio opened last month and is jointly operated with Gwantsi, one of China’s largest commercials production companies. Virtual production involves the use of high-resolution screens that create a backdrop
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German film and TV distribution and licensing company Telepool, which is owned by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook, is moving into lead producing movies and series, its CEO Yoko Higuchi-Zitzmann tells Variety exclusively in her first interview since joining the company in January. Munich-based Telepool is celebrating its 60th anniversary on Wednesday, and
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Set mostly in England, back before it was officially called England — and centuries before Great Britain was so much as a glint in the eye of James I — director Ed Bazalgette’s workmanlike historical epic “The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die” wraps up the events of “The Last Kingdom,” the Netfix drama series
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It’s nearly 30 years since the global franchise of Body Worlds exhibitions — collections of dissected and plastinated human cadavers, equal parts science lesson and carnival attraction — racked up ticket sales and stoked controversy in multiple international markets. Anatomist (or ringmaster) Gunther von Hagens professed to display the body as it had never been
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Singer and songwriter Alanis Morissette has recorded and released a new cover version of Showtime’s “Yellowjackets” main title theme song, “No Return.” Viewers who watched the fourth episode of “Yellowjackets,” which dropped on Showtime’s streaming service on the night of April 13, may have been surprised to hear Morissette’s new version of the song over
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SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 3, Episode 9 of “Star Trek: Picard,” currently streaming on Paramount+. Gates McFadden didn’t know what to expect when she first got on a Zoom call with “Star Trek: Picard” executive producers Terry Matalas and Akiva Goldsman. A few years earlier, Patrick Stewart had taken
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As seasoned espionage pros, they didn’t give up much, and they didn’t indulge in too much nostalgia. But for an hour or so on Wednesday evening, five core players of “The Americans” reunited in Midtown Manhattan to share stories and spread a few compliments for work they did together on the highly lauded FX series.
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Glen Powell is in talks to star opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in Universal and Amblin Entertainment’s “Twisters,” a sequel to 1996’s “Twister.” “Minari” helmer Lee Isaac Chung is directing the film from a script by “The Revenant” writer Mark L. Smith. “Twisters” is set to release on July 19, 2024. Starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Carey
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Madison De La Garza, who gained television fame as a child star thanks to her role on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” opened up to journalist and former “20/20” anchor Elizabeth Vargas on the “Heart of the Matter” podcast about battling cyberbullying and an eating disorder following her run on the show (via Entertainment Weekly). De La
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While Netflix continues to lead the competition, Disney+ showed a strong performance on the Nielsen Streaming Top 10 chart this week. During the March 13 – 19 viewing window, “The Mandalorian” jumped 25% in viewership, pushing the show to cross the billion minutes threshold with 1.1 billion viewing minutes with the release of the third
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Porter Robinson is a student of live music. Just days before the acclaimed DJ and musician flies to Los Angeles to begin rehearsing for his main stage Coachella set, he spends much of our 20-minute interview recounting recent performances that stuck out to him. But when discussing his favorite concerts, Robinson is mostly focused on
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Quentin Tarantino has been making the international press rounds in support of his “Cinema Speculation” book tour, recently speaking to Spain’s Diari ARA about how one of his only box office bombs shook his confidence as a film director. That bomb would be “Death Proof,” Tarantino’s 2017 stuntman action-thriller starring Kurt Russell that was released
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A new report looking at the success of the U.K. government’s COVID production scheme found it supported over 1,200 productions since its launch in July 2020. The scheme was set up to assist productions struggling to get COVID-related insurance before it was eventually shut down last spring. The report by Nordicity & Saffery Champness found
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Cannes Film Festival’s longtime director Thierry Fremaux sat down with Variety following the announcement of this year’s lineup, which includes a bevy of star-studded period movies, including Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Karim Aïnouz’s “Firebrand” and Jonathan Glazer’s “Zone of Interest.” Along with a raft of politically-minded films, there’s also a
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