Month: November 2023

There’s nothing super about the opening weekend of Disney’s superhero adventure “The Marvels,” which whiffed at the box office with $63 million internationally and $110 million globally. Those figures are far behind expectations (heading into the weekend, Disney hoped for $140 million or more, and even that wouldn’t have been great for the $220 million-budgeted

In the most shockingly funny moment of Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Miles Raymond, the desperate English teacher and wine aficionado (that is, alcoholic with good taste) played by Paul Giamatti, has just learned that his book was turned down by the publisher he had his hopes pinned on. It’s more than a rejection; it’s the death

Sofia Exarchou’s “Animal” won the Golden Alexander at the 64th Thessaloniki Film Festival on Sunday, marking the first time in 30 years that a Greek film took home the top honors at the country’s longest-running film event. Exarchou’s sophomore feature, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, was praised by Variety’s Jessica Kiang as “a

Disney‘s Marvel Cinematic Universe is no longer a bulletproof box office franchise. That much is clear after “The Marvels” misfired with $47 million in its opening weekend to land the worst debut in MCU history. Initial tracking was closer to $75 million to $80 million, but those projections shrank dramatically in recent weeks to $60

“Her Smell” director Alex Ross Perry is developing two nonfiction projects, including the as-yet-untitled doc about video stores. “I can’t speak for everybody but yeah, I miss them,” he tells Variety at Poland’s American Film Festival, where he also picked the Indie Star Award and treated the audience to work-in-progress footage. “I’m trying to tell

Ninety-seven times out of 100, a movie makes its moral judgments for us. Yes, there’s a haunting ambiguity to films like “The Conformist” or “Taxi Driver” or “Tár.” But when was the last time you saw moral ambiguity in a genre movie? Even the “Mad Max” films, in their visionary savagery, draw a clean line

Willem Dafoe spent six hours in the makeup chair each day for “Poor Things,” the actor recalled in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. Now able to speak about the Frankenstein reimagining after the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, Dafoe discussed his experience filming Yorgos Lanthimos’s upcoming black comedy. Dafoe stars as the disfigured mad

India Donaldson picked up the Polish Film Institute Award for her upcoming feature “Good One” at the American Film Festival in Wrocław, coming with a $50,000 cash prize for post-production in Poland. “It’s an affirmation of how we have been working and what we have been working towards,” Los Angeles-based Donaldson told Variety after the

The long-running “Terminator” franchise is headed to Netflix as a new animated series. The streamer made the announcement as part of their Geeked Week promotional cycle. Under the working title, “Terminator: The Anime Series,” the show will follow brand new characters and is created by Japanese animation studio Production IG (“Ghost in the Shell”). Here’s

Janet Landgard, who starred in 1968’s “The Swimmer” alongside Burt Lancaster and played Paul Petersen’s love interest for three seasons on “The Donna Reed Show,” has died. She was 75. Petersen shared the news of co-star Landgard’s death on Facebook, noting that cancer “took her life earlier this week.” He added that Landgard was “the

Conny Van Dyke, a singer-songwriter signed to Motown Records who starred in such films as “W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings” and “Framed,” has died. She was 78. Van Dyke died on Nov. 11 at her home in Los Angeles due to complications of vascular dementia, her son Bronson Page told Variety. The Detroit native was

Barack Obama celebrated the end of Hollywood’s historic strikes during a surprise appearance alongside former First Lady Michelle Obama at a special screening of Netflix’s “Rustin.” “It’s great to see even more of you since the strikes are over,” the former president told the audience on Friday night in Washington, D.C. He added, “As somebody

What a difference four years makes. When “Captain Marvel” hit theaters in March 2019, it landed what was then the seventh-highest domestic opening weekend across Marvel Cinematic Universe entries with $153 million — a colossal figure that only one 2023 release, “Barbie,” has exceeded. Now, several superhero entries later, its new sequel “The Marvels” likely

Academy Award-winning producer of “Moonlight” Adele Romanski teased upcoming projects at Poland’s American Film Festival, including Barry Jenkins’ “Mufasa: The Lion King.” “I think anything new is scary and scary is exciting. I run towards that. What we saw was an opportunity to work with new tools, to explore the inside of a different medium

There were sunny skies over the Thessaloniki Film Festival this week, with unseasonably high temperatures leading many visitors to reach for the sunscreen while dashing between movie premieres and industry events at Greece’s longest-running film fest. The local industry, too, is enjoying a moment in the sun, as the Mediterranean nation has seen production surge

Selected as this year’s Guest of Honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Chinese director Wang Bing sat down with the festival’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia for an in-depth talk on his career on Friday at the imposing Tuschinski Theatre in the Dutch capital. Bing commented on not wanting his films to be

Paris-based Reservoir Docs has acquired worldwide sales rights excluding Italy to “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,” a theatrical documentary by Scottish-Irish director Mark Cousins, featuring the voice of Tilda Swinton. The film, described by the producers as “visually ravishing,” explores the art of the 20th century Scottish painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Swinton will voice the

Rise and Shine World Sales has acquired In-Soo Radstake’s “Selling a Colonial War,” which world premieres in the International Competition section of documentary festival IDFA in Amsterdam. “Selling a Colonial War” looks to encourage the Dutch government and society to accept responsibility for their actions as a colonial power in Indonesia – and especially their