Movies

In today’s film news roundup, film commissioners have teamed up to launch a production resource service with information related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dave Franco’s “The Rental” finds a home, Saban Films will release “Most Wanted” in the summer and the Sun Valley Film Festival unveils its winners. INITIATIVE The Association of Film Commissioners International

With cinemas closed for the foreseeable future and scores of highly anticipated theatrical releases postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, “Master of None” co-creator Alan Yang’s feature directorial debut “Tigertail” is one of the few movies available to viewers craving fresh films to cope with life in lockdown. The highly personal project, which hits Netflix

In a competitive deal, Sight Unseen has acquired the film rights to Bess Kalb’s wildly imaginative memoir, “Nobody Will Tell You This But Me,” which was published by Knopf on March 17. Elizabeth Chomko will direct from a script adapted by Kalb. Sight Unseen’s Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, and Oren Moverman will produce. Chomko will

The coronavirus crisis may be prompting more festivals to migrate online, but not all filmmakers are on board. Director Alex Winter pulled his documentary “Zappa,” about rock iconoclast and classical composer Frank Zappa from both SXSW and CPH:DOX, rather than let the festivals stream his latest work. “We had to stand down because we’re in

The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Group, a centralized publishing label that comprises both trade publications, will rebrand as MRC Media, insiders familiar with the company told Variety. In addition to the new group name, parent owner Valence Media will also change its name to MRC — taking the moniker of the content studio the company owns, short

MADRID — Amazon Prime Video has secured global SVOD rights to the Javier Bardem starrer “Sanctuary,” a Toronto Festival world premiere which dispatches Javier and Carlos Bardem to the Antarctic to witness marine ecological devastation at first hand. Set to be released by Amazon on April 10, “Sanctuary” also paints a bigger picture – a

The Walt Disney Company’s previously announced furloughs have impacted each of its premium film labels, insiders tell Variety. Beginning on Thursday, staffers at labels like Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Searchlight and more were notified of furloughs, primarily impacting staffers who cannot perform their job duties due to ongoing shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic. Marketing and

Tribeca Film Institute and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced on Thursday the four winners of this year’s TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, which will be awarded grants of $150,000 with mentorship. The Fund, which champions fiction films and series that feature themes of science, math and technology, has selected “Mabel,” “The Mushroomers,” “Neon Tilapia” and

“We Summon the Darkness” is a psycho thriller that pulls the bloody rug out from under you, and does it in a shivery sly way. The movie, set in 1988, opens with three young women driving to a heavy-metal show in their red Jeep Cherokee along a country highway; for a short spell, it feels

Stunt pilot Frédéric North has decades of experience working in Hollywood on films like “Kong: Skull Island,” “Pacific Rim: Uprising” and Justin Lin’s latest “Fast & Furious” sequel, “F9.” So I shouldn’t be nervous as I climb aboard in mid-February for my first trip on a helicopter with him and aerial director of photography Dylan

AMC Theatres — whose business has effectively shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic — looks increasingly likely to file for bankruptcy with its cash reserves dwindling, according to Wall Street analysts. In a report Thursday, MKM Partners analyst Eric Handler wrote, “Based on our view that theatres will be closed until at least August

ViacomCBS has launched a $100 million fund to provide support to the crew members, actors, and filmmakers whose livelihoods have been impacted by the production shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Variety has learned. The funds will also support grants by the Motion Picture & Television Fund and The Actors Fund, along with the work

France Televisions Distribution, the commercial arm of the French public broadcaster, has launched international sales on “Parliament,” the anticipated half-hour satirical series which is debuting on Thursday on the pubcaster’s streaming platform France.tv. The first original series commissioned by France.tv, “Parliament” is a comedy series about the European Parliament created by Noé Debré, whose screenwriting

MADRID — Cecilia Roth starrer “Alice,” Ana Piterbarg’s “La Habitación Blanca,” Brazil’s sure-to-be controversial “Princesa,” and Mexico’s “Intersex” look like potential standouts in the just-announced movie project pitching platform MAFF Online by Filmarket Hub, part of the biggest push by far into a virtual marketplace made by any festival in the Spanish-speaking world. Launched by

Strand Releasing has acquired all North American rights to British-Cambodian filmmaker Hong Khaou’s “Monsoon,” a drama headlined by “Crazy Rich Asians” star Henry Golding and Parker Sawyers. Sold by Protagonist Pictures, “Monsoon” had its world premiere at Karlovy Vary last year and stars Golding as Kit, a young British man of Vietnamese decent who returns

When Universal’s “Trolls World Tour” lands on home entertainment platforms on Friday, it’ll mark the first major studio movie to skip its planned traditional theatrical release since the coronavirus outbreak forced cinemas to close. The unprecedented move, going against perennial protocol in exhibition, has many in the entertainment industry wondering: is the bold bet a

The British Film Institute has set out a package of support measures designed to assist the U.K. film industry as it struggles with the impact of the coronavirus crisis. Ben Roberts, chief executive of the BFI, said Thursday it has “repurposed” more than £4.6 million ($5.71 million) in funding to target specific areas of the

Juliette Schrameck, the managing director of French film group MK2 (“Portrait of a Young Lady on Fire”), has stepped down. During Schrameck’s decade-long tenure, MK2 had five movies playing in competition at the Cannes Film Festival two years in a row, in 2018 and 2019. Last year’s competition titles included Mati Diop’s Grand Prize winner

Hollywood studios have told the Writers Guild of America that contract negotiations, which have been delayed due to the coronavirus epidemic, need to begin by April 20. Carol Lombardini, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers made the request Wednesday in a letter to David Young, executive director of the Writers Guild

In today’s film news roundup, “The Trip to Greece” will be released on May 22, Easter weekend will see a TV release of Fathom Events’ “Jesus,” and a Mary Pickford project is in the works. ‘THE TRIP’ RETURNS IFC Films has set a May 22 digital and on demand release for the Steve Coogan–Rob Brydon

The coronavirus has made everyone a bit sensitive, with good reason, inspiring memes around such now-sensitive movie titles as delayed 007 entry “No Time to Die” and Emily Ting’s culture-shock indie “Go Back to China.” To this list of inappropriately named movies we might add “Why Don’t You Just Die!” — except that Russian director

Movie theaters are one of the many sectors of the entertainment industry forced to shutter as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the country. With nowhere to showcase their films, some Hollywood studios opted to skip theatrical releases entirely (in the case of Universal’s “Trolls World Tour” or Disney’s “Artemis Fowl”) or launch early on home

More than a dozen high-profile Hollywood producers have launched the It Takes Our Village fund for below-the-line film and television crew members impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Bruna Papandrea, whose credits include “Big Little Lies” and “Wild,” made the announcement Wednesday after witnessing first-hand how these crews were being affected. “The below-the-line crews are the

Plan B Entertainment, the Oscar-winning production label co-founded by Brad Pitt, has signed a first-look feature deal with Warner Bros. Pictures. The producer of Academy Award best picture winners “The Departed,” “12 Years a Slave,” and “Moonlight” will give Warner Bros. exclusive options on all film projects, returning to the studio home where it launched

The COVID-19 pandemic is still ripping through the U.S.; the hardest-hit state, New York, is still weeks away from a projected peak of infections; and the prospect of widespread, comprehensive testing still remains agonizingly out of reach. And yet entertainment businesses that depend on large public gatherings to survive — movie theaters, music venues, sports arenas,

MGM has nabbed rights to Ridley Scott’s true crime drama about the murder of fashion icon Guccio Gucci’s grandson Maurizio Gucci, Variety has confirmed. Lady Gaga is in early negotiations to star in the project, which MGM will release on Thanksgiving 2021. The film will be produced by Scott and Giannina Scott via their Scott

Netflix has joined forces with Audiens, the social protection group of the French cultural sector, to set up an emergency fund for local freelance artists and crew members. Netflix is set to inject €1 million ($1.09 million) into the fund that’s being set up with Audiens, in collaboration with France’s National Film Board (CNC). The

Over 50 European film and TV organizations have issued a joint statement this morning calling for E.U. and member state decision-makers to take urgent action to safeguard the future of the sectors in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The statement has been co-signed by 51 organizations and companies including producers’ alliance Pact, the International

The COVID-19 Film and TV Emergency Relief Fund has opened for applications in the U.K., as research shows that 93% of industry freelancers are no longer working due to the coronavirus crisis. Created by The Film and TV Charity in partnership with the BFI to provide support to workers and freelancers hit hardest by the

In the old days, you would check in on an alien-visitation shlock-TV documentary (or an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries”) all to catch those grainy home-movie glimpses of alien spaceships. On that score, “Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind” is nothing less than an all-you-can-eat banquet of UFO porn. There are vintage clips of “sightings” shot