Month: February 2024

Paramount’s musical biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” ruled in its box office debut, beating expectations with $27.7 million over the traditional weekend and $51 million during the six-day holiday stretch. It was initially projected to generate $30 million to $35 million between Valentine’s Day on Wednesday and President’s Day on Monday. But it experienced an

The delayed release of “Wonka” continued to pay dividends as the Timothee Chalamet-starring fantasy headed the box office in South Korea for a third weekend. But the theatrical market contracted sharply after the Lunar New Year holiday. “Wonka,” which released in much of the world in December, took $1.95 million between Friday and Sunday in

The BAFTA Film Awards are underway at London’s Royal Festival Hall, where the best films and performances of the year — according to the British Academy — will be revealed. “Oppenheimer” leads the nominations with 13, followed by “Poor Things” with 11. Both are up for best film, while “Oppenheimer” also received nods for adapted

“Wonka” has notched another sweet box office benchmark. The fantasy musical, starring Timothée Chalamet as the eccentric, fictional chocolatier, has crossed $600 million globally. After 10 weeks on the big screen, “Wonka” has generated $210 million in North America and $395.1 million internationally for a towering worldwide tally of $604.9 million. Warner Bros. backed the $125

Sony Pictures has bought international rights to “Materialists,” Celine Song’s follow up to “Past Lives” which is nominated for best picture and original screenplay at the Oscars. The worldwide deal for “Materlialists” excludes certain territories. A24 will handle the U.S. release of “Materialists” which Song will write, direct and produce alongside 2AM and Killer Films.

In November 2021, 61 years after Benin gained independence from the French empire, 26 of the many thousands of plundered national antiquities were returned by France to their African home. Inserting an inquisitive, imaginative intelligence into this key moment in the troubled timeline of post-imperial cultural politics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop fashions her superb, short

The 2024 BAFTA Film Awards will broadcast on BBC One and stream on iPlayer and BritBox on Sunday night, starting at 7 p.m. local time. BritBox recently inked a deal with BAFTA to stream a simulcast of the BAFTA Film Awards through 2025. Hosted by David Tennant, this year’s ceremony will take place at the

Olivier Assayas, the celebrated French director of “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Irma Vep,” is making his Berlinale competition debut this year with “Suspended Time,” his most personal film to date. Speaking to Variety ahead of the movie’s premiere at the Berlinale, Assayas says the film retells his experience during the lockdown and is based

At the Berlin Film Festival press conference for her new film “Love Lies Bleeding,” Kristen Stewart said she thinks the era of queer films “being so pointedly only that is done,” adding that it’s time for films to focus on “sidelined perspectives” while “not making it all about the reasons that they’re sidelined.” “Love Lies

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Zois, who’s set to bow his sophomore feature, “Arcadia,” in the competitive Encounters strand of the Berlin Film Festival Feb. 18, is developing his first TV series. “Play” follows a lone cinephile who joins a mysterious group of strangers that reenact scenes from movies in real life. The eight-part mystery-drama series tells

Launching in competition in Berlin, Mati Diop’s “Dahomey” traces the path of 26 royal treasures purloined by French soldiers in 1892 and restituted to the country of Benin in 2021. Moving from Paris to Cotonou, the inventive documentary allows the artifacts to speak for themselves, reflecting on their journey in Fon-language dialogue often set against

Three years ago, in an awards season narrowed and clouded by the global pandemic, the BAFTA awards acted as an unprecedentedly accurate Oscar bellwether, matching the U.S. Academy’s eventual selections in all but one of 19 feature-film categories — from “Nomadland’s” best film victory to acting wins for Anthony Hopkins and Frances McDormand. (In the

When Laila Stieler’s script for “From Hilde, With Love,” which world premiered Saturday in competition at the Berlinale, first came to director Andreas Dresen he was a little reluctant to take the project on. The issue was not the script but the subject-matter: set in Nazi-era Berlin, “From Hilde, With Love” is a love story

In Christine Angot‘s documentary “A Family,” which premieres Sunday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, the French novelist explores how various members of her family reacted to the revelation that she was repeatedly raped by her father from the age of 13. The film starts with a startling confrontation between Angot and

Despite being significantly hit by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, U.K. film studios and production facilities are looking to pick back up where they left off after a record-breaking year for film and high-end television production spend in 2022. When asked what the industry can expect in terms of business in the year

Production firm Movierock and rights sales outfit Hive Filmworks are in advanced production on “Hear Me: Our Summer,” a Korean remake of hit 2009 romance film “Hear Me” from Taiwan. The story involves a motorbike delivery man who falls in love with a hearing-impaired younger woman. Comparing themselves with water birds and trees the pair

Prolific Singapore-based production firm Akanga Film Asia has come on board Indian director Rima Das’ upcoming “Malati, My Love.” Das, who is known for her touching dramas from Assam in Northeast India, has become a regular of the international festival circuit. Recent titles include “Village Rockstars” and “Tora’s Husband.” The new film, which was launched

It was over an awkward meeting in a fancy London hotel room in late 2021 that Rose Glass first pitched Kristen Stewart her then rough idea for “Love Lies Bleeding,” a wild romantic thriller set amid the bodybuilding scene in 80s New Mexico.  The director, whose debut feature “Saint Maud” released the previous year, admits

Georgian-Swedish director Levan Akin is again winning over audiences with his latest film, “Crossing,” which opened the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama section. The touching drama is about retired teacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli), who sets off with a young companion, Achi (Lucas Kankava), on a journey from the Georgian city of Batumi to Turkey, where she

Africa’s growing screen industries are making their mark on the global stage, with three titles in the main competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, but how to unlock the continent’s still-untapped potential was a question on the minds of many at a conference hosted on Saturday by the European Film Market. A partnership between

Georgian producing duo Nino Chichua and Anna Khazaradze, whose 1991 Prods. is among the co-producers of Levan Akin’s Berlinale Panorama opener “Crossing,” have set their next feature, a political drama from rising director Uta Beria, as the company launches a new London arm with an eye toward fostering more collaborations between the U.K. and mainland

A tale of magical realism slowly stripped of its magic, Raam Reddy’s gorgeously photographed, politically subversive “The Fable” trades in idyllic memories, but reveals their hidden dimensions. Set in 1989, on a lush Himalayan orchard in northeastern India, Reddy’s second feature follows a family of four, whose patriarch runs the once-colonial estate with the help

Farcical and viscerally upsetting in equal measure, P.S. Vinothraj’s “The Adamant Girl” masterfully exposes the nature of superstition by zeroing in on gendered expectations. A story of a betrothed woman being shepherded by her fiancé’s family between sites of religious ritual, the rural Tamil-language drama plays like an extension of “Pebbles,” Vinothraj’s remarkable 2021 debut

When you have the SAG Award nominated ensemble of “American Fiction” – John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross and Jeffrey Wright (also individually nominated in male lead and Oscar nominated for the film) you have to ask them where it all began. In discussing their first jobs for the union, Ross revealed that, like

Over the past few years Italian cinema has been making strides in the global arena and 2024 looks likely to bolster its international standing. New works by top auteurs Paolo Sorrentino and Luca Guadagnino will be launching from the festival circuit just as a fresh crop of directors comes to fore, starting with Margherita Vicario,