Movies

The end of the 2020 Awards Season is upon us! As Hollywood A-listers and executives party all the way up to and through the main event on Sunday night, Variety will be all over town reporting from inside all the biggest A-list bashes and the most intimate gatherings. Keep checking back for all the latest

ASCAP today announced the first wave of music creators who will appear at the 2020 ASCAP Experience (which was formerly called the ASCAP “I Create Music” EXPO), taking place April 1 – 3 at the InterContinental Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. ASCAP Chairman of the Board and President Paul Williams leads a lineup of more than 40 different panels stacked with industry talent (89% of whom

After “Joker” star Joaquin Phoenix took Hollywood to task at the BAFTA Awards over the lack of diversity in this year’s awards season nominees, urging his counterparts to “do the hard work” to dismantle racism, many in the industry immediately took notice, and Cynthia Erivo is no exception. Erivo is nominated in the lead actress

Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique expands their slate for the upcoming Berlin Film Festival with global sales rights on “Last and First Men,” from the late Icelandic-born filmmaker-composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, which will world premiere in the Berlinale Special section. With narration by Tilda Swinton, “Last and First Men” juxtaposes a science-fiction story written in 1930

The challenges facing U.K. independent producers have been laid bare in a survey that shows that many earn less than £6,000 ($7,800) a year for their film producing work. According to the Producers’ Roundtable survey, 75% of independent film producers who have made one to two feature films earned less than £6,000 a year over

February 6, 2020 3:47AM PT Construction has begun in Seoul’s Chungmuro district on a complex that will house a museum, film archives and screening rooms. Chungmuro is the old center of Korea’s film industry, akin to Hollywood in Los Angeles, or Soho in London. In recent years, much of the Korean industry has moved to

February 6, 2020 3:35AM PT TrustNordisk has picked up international sales rights to Martin Zandvliet’s next crime-thriller “The Marco Effect” which is based on Jussi Adler-Olsen’s bestselling novel by the same name. The screenplay for “The Marco Effect” is written by Anders F. August (“A Fortunate Man”) and was co-written by Thomas Porsager. The film

Berlin-based sales agent M-appeal has picked up Norwegian children’s film “Sisters: The Summer We Found Our Superpowers,” ahead of the European Film Market in Berlin, where it will screen. The film, an uplifting and empowering story about sisterhood, is directed by Silje Salomonsen and Arild Østin Ommundsen, who are a married couple, and stars their

Representation of women and people of color in feature films has never been better in Hollywood — if it’s on screen. According to a major new study from UCLA’s social sciences division and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, authored by Dr. Darnell Hunt and Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, the film industry’s efforts to

Beta Cinema has acquired world sales rights outside Israel and Poland for “My Neighbor Adolf,” the new film by Leon Prudovsky (“Five Hours from Paris”), starring David Hayman (“The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”) and Udo Kier (“The Painted Bird”). Set in Colombia in the 1960s, the film is centred on Polsky (Hayman), a lonely

February 5, 2020 10:17PM PT Dominique Green, a veteran of both the French and British film industries, has been appointed artistic director of the Dinard Film Festival, a festival in Brittany, northwestern France that showcases films from the U.K. Green’s early career involved distribution, exhibition and festivals and a sting at Virgin Films. Twelve years

The great stars of Hollywood were, and maybe still are, our demigods. They have always existed on a magical plane, standing in for some cathartic fusion of who we are and who we want to be. They’re our idealized selves. But even all demigods aren’t created equal. In vintage Hollywood, there was a certain kind

For filmmaker Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” events, stylist Karla Welch sought “more powerful looks that still feel very much ‘her.’ “ Oct. 27 “Olivia was my first client ever, so we’ve been together over a decade,” says Welch. “And now that she is a director, we have a different approach. … She’s super strong, she’s obviously

Tokyo’s annual TIFFCOM film rights market will relocate to a new, hotel venue closer to the Tokyo International Film Festival. The market will also return to dates which coincide with the movie showcase. TIFFCOM will be held Nov. 4-6, 2020 at the Prince Park Tower Hotel, organizers announced on Thursday. The festival will run from

Kirk Douglas was Mr. Hollywood. That’s not just because of his acting and producing career: The iconic actor, who died Wednesday, was a constant presence at showbiz-related functions, whether the opening of a theater, a charity event, political fund-raiser or awards show. His 1996 stroke slowed him down, but only temporarily. Douglas enjoyed being the

In today’s film news roundup, Atlas Literary is born, Emily Tosta is cast in Nicolas Cage’s “Wally’s Wonderland” and Netflix confirms it’s closed a deal for Radha Blank’s “The 40-Year-Old Version.” DIVISION LAUNCH Atlas Entertainment is expanding into literary management with the acquisition of HertzbergMedia and launch of Atlas Literary. Atlas chief Charles Roven and

Hollywood paid tribute to Kirk Douglas, one of the enduring figureheads of its Golden Age, following news of the actor’s death on Wednesday. The star of classics such as “Spartacus,” “Paths of Glory,” “Ace in the Hole” and “Out of the Past” died at 103 years old. Director Steven Spielberg was among those who paid

Julian Fellowes, the writer and creator of “Downton Abbey,“ has teamed up with producer Gerald R. Molen on a big-screen production of the classic children’s novel “The Wind in the Willows.” Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital is on board for the CGI for the four main characters — Mole, Rat, Toad and Badger — who live

Sam Raimi, who helped launch the modern superhero movie with 2002’s “Spider-Man,” is in talks to direct “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” for Marvel Studios, Variety has learned. Raimi replaces original director Scott Derrickson, who Variety reported on Jan. 9 had officially departed the project due to creative differences. Derrickson will remain as

Oscar producers Lynette Howell Taylor and Stephanie Allain are promising that the 92nd Oscars will have plenty of diversity on display on Sunday. “Lynette and I have always embraced diversity and inclusion in our work and we already had plans before the nominations were announced to celebrate that, so I think you’ll see that in

Kirk Douglas, the dimple-chinned “Spartacus” star with the larger-than-life persona, died Wednesday. He was 103. He was the father of actor Michael Douglas and paterfamilias of a Hollywood family that included his sons, producers Joel and Peter and grandson Cameron Douglas. Michael Douglas posted about his father on Instagram, saying, “It is with tremendous sadness

Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, Richard Thomas, Linda Emond and Emma Nelson are joining Sandra Bullock and Viola Davis in an untitled Netflix thriller from Graham King. Aisling Franciosi and Rob Morgan are also on board to star. Nora Fingscheidt will direct from a script by “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” helmer Christopher McQuarrie. King will produce

February 5, 2020 12:00PM PT Ice Cube is set to co-star opposite Ryan Destiny in Universal’s biopic “Flint Strong.” The sports drama, based on the 2015 boxing documentary “T-Rex,” follows Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (Destiny), a 17-year-old Flint, Michigan native who dreams of becoming the first woman in history to win an Olympic gold medal in

A front desk clerk said he was concerned for Jessica Mann’s safety when she checked in at the DoubleTree Hotel on March 18, 2013 with Harvey Weinstein. The hotel employee’s testimony could bolster prosecutors’ criminal case against the movie mogul. Mann alleges the Weinstein raped her in his hotel room. Her allegations are a key

Throughout its history, the Academy Awards has been subject to intense criticism for the issues it embraces — and ignores. This year’s uproar over the lack of diversity among nominations in the highest-profile awards categories is the latest example. This failure reflects a chronic dearth of opportunity at Hollywood’s top artistic and financial levels. The milestone nominations

February was once considered a box office dead zone. Conventional wisdom mandated that studios release all their tentpoles during the summer or around the holidays to sell tickets. But commercial triumphs like 2015’s “Fifty Shades of Grey,” 2016’s “Deadpool” and 2018’s “Black Panther” helped buck that notion over the years and encouraged studios to take

The visual language of film is universal. In “Parasite,” low, flickering light shows the distraught look on the face of the patriarch of the Kim family as the basement floods and his meager possessions are washed away. In “Corpus Christi,” natural light is used as a metaphor to symbolize life. Cinematographers of four of the

Evil is abound in the first trailer for “Spiral,” a new chapter in the “Saw” horror franchise. Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Rock star in the reboot. The footage, which debuted Wednesday, introduces Rock’s brash detective and his rookie partner (portrayed by Max Minghella). They begin investigating grisly crime scenes that ring familiar to the

On the scale of damage that a devil-doll superheroine can cause, breaking a man’s legs doesn’t sound all that extreme. Yet when Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the vengeful sister-of-mayhem in “Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),” breaks legs, she does it with a certain hellbent je ne sais quoi. It

Variety has been given exclusive access to the first clip from Berlinale Special Gala film “Curveball,” which is inspired by the true story of how the work of the German secret service led to the Iraq War. “Curveball,” which will have its world premiere at the Berlinale, was directed by Johannes Naber, and written by