October 1, 2019 10:00AM PT Lionsgate nabbed the rights to “White Bird: A Wonder Story,” a forthcoming graphic novel from author R.J. Palacio. The studio recently adapted her popular book “Wonder” into a feature film starring Jacob Tremblay and Julia Roberts. News of the acquisition comes as “White Bird” hits bookstores Tuesday. The novel centers
Movies
At long last, the first full-length trailer for “Birds of Prey,” featuring Margot Robbie’s colorful alter-ego, has made its worldwide debut. DC Comics released the official trailer for its forthcoming film Tuesday, showing Harley Quinn’s transformation from Joker’s sidekick to leader of the group of antiheroes. “You know what a harlequin is? A harlequin’s role
It’s been a month of milestones for Tyler Perry. On Sept. 13, the actor, filmmaker and media mogul celebrated his 50th birthday, a date he didn’t expect to see. “I didn’t think I would live to even see 30,” says Perry, who has spoken openly about his abusive father and tough childhood. “I was a
October 1, 2019 7:51AM PT Xavier Henry-Rashid’s London-based sales agency Film Republic has picked up world rights to Rolando Colla’s “What You Don’t Know About Me,” which receives its world premiere this week at the Zurich Film Festival. The story follows the relationship between a refugee and a Swiss national, who get caught up in
Sudan’s “You Will Die at Twenty,” a “call for freedom” in the words of director Amjad Abu Alala, won the Golden Star award for best narrative feature film at the El Gouna Film Festival, one of the Arab world’s top film events. The film previously won the Venice Film Festival’s award for best debut film.
Robert De Niro felt guilty. It was the Italian premiere of “Righteous Kill.” The crowds stretched all along the red carpet on a September day in 2008, shouting his name and gripping stills of the actor in hopes of getting his autograph. It was a convulsion of unadulterated fandom, all served up amid a colonnaded
For Variety’s latest issue, we asked Timothée Chalamet to write a tribute to Josh and Benny Safdie, two of 50 people to make our New Power of New York list. For the full list, click here. Have you ever been to a fancy party with Josh and Benny Safdie? They stick out like sore thumbs.
Films from mainland China are completely absent from the list of nominees announced Tuesday for the annual Golden Horse Awards. And with only a handful of titles from Hong Kong on the list, the competition has devolved into a mostly Taiwanese affair. The awards, based in Taiwan and chaired by Oscar-winner Ang Lee, have traditionally
The upcoming Red Sea International Film Festival, which is Saudi Arabia’s first major film event, has announced a first batch of Arabic projects that will benefit from a total of up to $3 million in support as well as mentoring through its Sundance-like development program, the Red Sea Lodge. The program has been set up
MADRID — In 1996, when still at high school, Spain’s Arturo Guillen, having flunked some exams, took a summer job at Entertainment Data Inc.(EDI), which had just set up in Spain, intent on delivering computer-collected box office results to distributors. Cinema theaters would start relaying results from 10 pm, Guillén recalls. Sometimes the computer froze,
Wayne Fitzgerald, the main title designer of films and television shows including “Apocalypse Now,” “The Graduate,” “Chinatown,” “Dallas,” “The Searchers,” “The Godfather” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” died Monday in Whidbey Island, Wash. He was 89. Fitzgerald began his title design career with Pacific Art & Title Studio after graduating from Pasadena’s Art Center
The family vacation gone awry is such a routinely fraught, fruitful dramatic setup that it practically qualifies as its own genre. Yet while various horror films might bring external threats into proceedings, Chilean helmer Jorge Riquelme Serrano’s exceptionally poised, frozen-hearted “Some Beasts” finds all the danger it needs in the family itself: a well-to-do clan
The saying goes “never meet your heroes,” but the cast of “Dolemite Is My Name” did just that when acting opposite Eddie Murphy in the biopic about the comedy legend’s idol Rudy Ray Moore. “I finally got a chance to work with one of my heroes. I’ve been trying to do it for over three
Vidiots, the iconic Santa Monica video-store-turned-film-nonprofit, will reopen next fall as a store and movie theater in Los Angeles’ Eagle Rock neighborhood. The nonprofit announced on Monday that it would restore the 90-year-old, 200-seat Eagle Theatre to its original purpose as an independent theater with state-of-the-art sound and projection, and offer a full program of
September 30, 2019 12:42PM PT “Clueless” star and one-time California congressional candidate Stacey Dash was arrested for domestic battery Sunday in Pasco County, Fla. A Pasco County police report obtained by Variety details the alleged incident: The actress became involved in a “verbal argument” at roughly 7:45 p.m. She allegedly pushed the victim, resulting in red
For the first time in its history, the Morelia Film Festival will open with a European film, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s drama “Le Jeune Ahmed” (“Young Ahmed”), which garnered a best director prize for the Belgian siblings at Cannes last May. Luc Dardenne will be on hand to present the drama, described by Variety critic Peter Debruge
When “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” hits theaters Oct. 15, it will be the reuniting of one-time friends Ben Affleck and Kevin Smith, who had been reportedly estranged for a number of years. Affleck’s cameo in the comedy — his seventh appearance in a Smith movie — was a highpoint for Smith, who told Variety
September 30, 2019 7:00AM PT Pedro Almodóvar turned 70 this week, celebrating the milestone at the New York Film Festival premiere of his latest film “Pain and Glory.” “I feel at home here. I was born at film festivals. It is a part of me,” the auteur told Variety before the screening of his most
MADRID — The Incubator feature film development program at Madrid’s prestigious ECAM film school has announced a new agreement with Cannes’ Focus CoPro’, which will see one of The Incubator’s five feature film projects participate at the Cannes Court Métrage – Short Film Corner event in 2020. Focus CoPro is one of the year’s top
Dev Patel, Alia Shawkat and George Wendt are leading the English cast of the critically-acclaimed animated film “I Lost My Body,” directed by Jeremy Clapin. The unique film, which follows the adventures of a severed hand as it tries to find its way back to its body through the subways and streets of Paris, won
The life story of magicians and entertainers Siegfried and Roy is coming to the big screen. German multihyphenate Michael Bully Herbig, one of Germany’s biggest stars and most successful directors, is partnering with UFA Fiction to direct two feature film projects, including a biopic about the German-American entertainers, whose Las Vegas act with big cats
September 30, 2019 3:31AM PT Opening on Wednesday, Warner Bros. Korea’s “Battle of Jangsari” topped the weekend box office chart. The war drama earned $4.59 million from 690,000 admissions between Wednesday and Sunday, including $3.45 million over the weekend. Co-directed by Kwak Kyung-taek (“Friend”) and Kim Tae-hun (“Iris 2”), the war action film stars top
September 30, 2019 1:55AM PT Studiocanal has extended its relationship with Hammer Films and licensed the global distribution and marketing rights to films from its catalogue, which includes horror classics such as “The Curse of Frankenstein,” “Dracula” and “The Mummy.” The deal gives Studiocanal the rights to more than 200 Hammer titles, which it will
In a muddled up pre-holiday weekend, patriotism rather than any individual film was the box office winner in China. The upcoming 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, which will officially be celebrated on Tuesday Oct. 1, has already swayed the film releasing calendar for weeks. Over the past weekend, the top scoring
How do you create original music for a stage show about the love of music? It’s a tall order for even the most seasoned theater producer, never mind a first-timer. But Cameron Crowe, as we’ve come to know, is nothing if not courageous. From his earliest magazine work in the 1970s to the era-defining script
When the executives at Netflix saw the response to “The Irishman” on Friday, the opening night of the New York Film Festival, they must have been popping champagne corks. The audience was hugely enthusiastic about the film, and the critical response was through the roof, with many hailing Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour swan-song-of-the-Mob drama as a
There are two big takeaways in “Someone, Somewhere,” director Cédric Klapisch’s return to Paris after satisfying detours to New York (“Chinese Puzzle”) and eastern France (“Back to Burgundy”). The first, which makes for the better movie, is you can’t love someone until you’ve learned to love yourself. The second, which drags the movie down, is
Disney and Fox’s “Ad Astra” scaled international box office charts again, maintaining its lead for the second weekend in a row. The astronaut drama starring Brad Pitt amassed another $18 million from 50 foreign territories, easily placing first overseas among Hollywood offerings. After two weekends in theaters, “Ad Astra” has generated $53.5 million abroad and
“Abominable” towered over the box office this weekend as Universal and DreamWorks’ animated adventure debuted to $20.85 million in North America and $29.7 million worldwide. The PG movie benefitted as one of the few offerings at multiplexes catering to family crowds and marked the best opening of the year for an original animated film. It
Cinema can find so many ways in. Alejandro Landes’ astonishing “Monos,” recently named Colombia’s official Oscar submission, seeps in through the skin like a sweet, druggy sickness — the kind that heightens and sharpens your dreams even as it scrambles them, making the brights brighter and the darks darker, while keeping you feverishly uncertain about