Movies

January 24, 2020 2:17PM PT Sony Pictures is in early development of a reboot of the “Anaconda” franchise, hiring “Divergent” writer Evan Daugherty to write the project. The studio has not set up the project with a producer, director or actors. Sony released the original “Anaconda” in 1997 as a horror thriller starring Jennifer Lopez,

January 24, 2020 1:32PM PT A longtime friend of Annabella Sciorra testified Friday in Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial that the actor turned to cutting herself and exhibited other troubling behavior in the mid-1990s after she was allegedly raped by the disgraced film mogul. The defense questioning of model Kara Young got heated as Judge James

Quibi CEO Meg Whitman apologized for comparing journalists to sexual predators, saying her remarks did not convey her true feelings about the press. “I used an analogy that was inappropriate and just plain wrong,” Whitman said in an interview at Variety‘s studio at the Sundance Film Festival. “None of us are ever perfect. I didn’t

In 1988, presidential candidate George H.W. Bush dismissed his rival Michael Dukakis as a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.” By contrast, Bush proclaimed himself “for the people,” as though the American Civil Liberties Union, a nonprofit organization that defends the equal human rights established in the Constitution, was instead championing UFOs. There’s a documentary or

Sony’s “Bad Boys for Life” is dominating North American moviegoing with about $26 million at 2,155 sites, early estimates showed Friday. Universal’s World War I epic “1917” will finish at a distant second with about $13 million in the wake of receiving 10 Academy Award nominations and the top film award from the Producers Guild

January 24, 2020 12:47PM PT From bears to lions to deer: Disney is developing a live-action remake of its 1942 animated feature “Bambi,” Variety has confirmed. Screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet (“Captain Marvel”) and Lindsey Beer (“Sierra Burgess Is a Loser”) will write the screenplay, with Chris and Paul Weitz’s Depth of Field producing. The film will employ the

A private investigator was called to testify on Friday afternoon during the Harvey Weinstein trial. Sam Anson, an investigator for the company Guidepost Solutions, was called in as a witness by the state. Anson said he was approached directly by Weinstein to investigate people he believed were talking to journalists about his sexual conduct with

Warner Bros.’ Hamburg-based German division, Warner Bros. Entertainment GmbH, has agreed for the first time to financial contributions of €1 million ($1.1 million) annually for regional funder Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein (FFHSH). The three-year deal, signed between Warner Bros. and the FFHSH on Friday, marks the first time that Warner Bros. has contributed to any of

Elyse Steinberg, one of the co-directors of the new documentary “The Fight,” was inspired to learn more about the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shortly after Donald Trump moved into in the White House. “Seven days into Trump’s presidency,” she recalls, after the travel ban in Muslim-majority countries was issued in January 2017, “I joined

STX’s Matthew McConaughey crime comedy “The Gentlemen” has opened with a moderate $725,000 at 1,885 North American locations on Thursday night. Horror thriller “The Turning” launched with $425,000 at 2,200 sites on Thursday night. The movie, based on Henry James’ 1898 novella “The Turn of the Screw,” stars Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard and Brooklynn Prince.

Aubrey Plaza gives a go-for-broke performance in “Black Bear,” a galvanizing and serpentine thriller about a weekend getaway that goes dangerously off the rails. The film premieres at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday and Plaza’s work is a million miles removed from April Ludgate, the deadpan and apathetic intern from “Parks and Recreation” that

Gaumont, the once thriving French studio behind “The Intouchables” and “Narcos,” is set to rejig its film and TV strategy as it anticipates heavy losses in 2019. Variety can reveal that the company has all but shut down its TV distribution operations in the U.S., recently axing 12 employees, including Vanessa Shapiro, president of worldwide

There’s an exceptional level of craftsmanship among this year’s nominees for the Cinema Audio Society Awards, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments in sound mixing, a collaborative discipline that requires sound editors, re-recording mixers, Foley and ADR artistry to work together to create a harmonious finished product. The categories considered are: live action, animated and documentary features,

January 24, 2020 3:22AM PT Reel Suspects has acquired international sales rights to Caru Alves de Souza’s coming-of-age tale “My Name is Baghdad,” which will world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in the Generation 14 section. The film was produced by Manjericão Filmes and Tangerina Entretenimento. It follows a 17-year-old female skater named Baghdad

The 70th edition of the Berlinale will open with Philippe Falardeau’s anticipated “My Salinger Year,” headlined by a powerful female duo, Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley. Set in New York’s literary world in the 90’s, the coming-of-age-story is based on Joanna Rakoff’s international bestseller and follows Joanna (Qualley), who leaves graduate school to pursue her

The year is 1989 and New Jack Swing is about to push black culture from the margins to the mainstream. The question for the black employees of Culture, the music TV station at the center of writer-director Justin Simien’s delightfully macabre horror-dramedy “Bad Hair,” is what image do they — and their white executive Grant

Deeply personal but indulgently campy, Justin Simien’s Sundance opener “Bad Hair” is a genre-blending horror show that the director said serves as a tribute to the struggles of black women. The mind behind  “Dear White People” staged the world premiere for the project at Park City’s Ray Theater on Thursday night, before a cast that

Fly-on-the-wall portraits of pop-music stars used to be dominated by, you know, pop music. The life and personality and woe-is-me-I’m-caught-in-the-media-fishbowl spectacle of the star herself was part of the equation, yet all that stuff had a way of dancing around the edges. Now, though, it’s front and center. In “Taylor Swift: Miss Americana,” we catch

China closed swathes of cinemas on Friday in response to the outbreak of novel coronavirus, which started in the city of Wuhan and has now killed 26 people. The closures come a day after the distributors and producers of the seven major blockbusters that had expected to launch from Jan. 25 cancelled their films’ releases.

Chinese film production and online group Huanxi Media has cancelled plans for the theatrical release of its blockbuster Chinese New Year film “Lost in Russia” and will release it online for free instead. The move is both a reaction to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that has caused disruption and panic throughout China, and as the

Incredible. That’s the word that comes to mind with Benjamin Ree’s “The Painter and the Thief,” a stranger-than-fiction friendship story in which vérité techniques produce unbelievable results. I don’t mean to imply that this astonishing documentary isn’t truthful. Rather, I’m in awe of how things played out, and fully aware that there was a certain

January 23, 2020 7:50PM PT “The Cost of Silence,” a new documentary about the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, doesn’t just chronicle the worst oil drilling disaster in history. It looks at the devastating impact that the use of chemicals called “dispersants” had on Gulf Coast families. It turns out the so-called cleanup

Eleven-year-old Senegalese immigrant Amy (Fathia Youssouf) reckons there are two ways to be a woman. Amy could mimic her mom (Maïmouna Gueye), a dutiful drudge with three kids and a husband who’s just announced he’s bringing home a second wife. Or she could copy the “Cuties,” a quartet of brazen girls who wear tube tops

If “Crip Camp” strikes you as a politically incorrect name for a movie about a summer camp where kids on crutches, in wheelchairs, and otherwise living with disabilities found it possible to feel included rather than ostracized, consider this: The irreverent, stereotype-busting documentary was co-directed by Berkeley-based sound designer Jim LeBrecht, a spina bifida survivor

January 23, 2020 6:15PM PT If ‘Blindspotting’ was Carlos López Estrada’s ode to Oakland, then this inspirational spoken-word ensemble project is his hallelujah to L.A. “Use your words.” I remember one of my sheroes saying that to a stammering 4-year-old decades ago. Here was a woman who’d dedicated her life to preschool education, whom I

In today’s film news roundup, a Mickey Rourke crime drama will premiere in Portugal, a film about the Purdue Pharma scandal is in the works and the documentary “After Parkland” will be shown at 100 locations on the second anniversary of the Parkland shootings. FESTIVAL OPENER The world premiere of Mickey Rourke’s crime drama “Adverse”

John Cooper, the outgoing director of the Sundance Film Festival, has been on Robert Redford’s payroll for 30 years. Many in the small world of Hollywood, and the even smaller ecosystem of global film festivals, braced at the announcement last June that Cooper would step down, taking with him decades of institutional memory. Cooper spoke

Stylist Michael Fisher wanted Sam Rockwell’s looks to reflect his dynamic acting: “Sam and I gravitate towards color and pattern.” Sept. 8 “It’s a celebration with Sam every time we have a fitting,” says stylist Michael Fisher of longtime client Rockwell. “He’ssuch a vibrant, amazing actor and personality, and he really enjoys these moments, so

A woman will be conducting at the Oscars for the first time on Sunday, Feb. 9, the Academy announced today. Irish-born composer-conductor Eímear Noone will conduct excerpts from the five nominated scores. She is the first female to lead the orchestra in the history of the televised awards, the Academy said. Details beyond that are

All five of this year’s Oscar-nominated original songs will be performed during the awards telecast on Feb. 9, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday. The performances will be: “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from “Toy Story 4”: Performed by Randy Newman; music and lyrics by Newman. “(I’m Gonna)