Movies

Despite becoming the first female director to receive the 2019 pioneer of the year award from the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, “Charlie’s Angels” helmer Elizabeth Banks told Variety that directing wasn’t necessarily always her goal. “It was something that I dabbled in and something that I did in college and over time, I

Arthouse cinema isn’t generally inclined toward “Alien vs. Predator”-style franchise mashups, but if some kind of icy faceoff were engineered between the troubled, seething music instructors of Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher” and Ina Weisse’s “The Audition,” all bets would be off. As played with customary, finely razored emotional control by Nina Hoss, violin teacher

There’s a certain breed of scuzzy inept criminal yokel — he’s the sap trying to hide what he did, but doing it in such an amateur way that his scheme devolves into a shambolic mess — who has become inseparable, in movies, from a kind of downscale-heartland-of-America hipster satire. The Coen brothers, in a number

Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” a sequel to 2014’s dark fantasy-adventure starring Angelina Jolie, hopes to charm moviegoers when it hits theaters on Oct. 18. The film, told from the perspective of the evil sorceress in “Sleeping Beauty,” is projected to launch with $50 million, pacing slightly behind the first movie’s opening weekend. The original

Jennifer Aniston and Greg Berlanti will be honored at SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s fourth annual Patron of the Artists Awards. The duo will be feted on Nov. 7 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Berlanti will receive a Patron of the Artists Award for creating significant professional opportunities for performing artists

The Independent Filmmaker Project has selected Laura Dern for its actress tribute and FilmNation Entertainment CEO Glen Basner for the industry tribute at the 2019 IFP Gotham Awards. The ceremony will be held on Dec. 2 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. “From her early roles in ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ to

September 26, 2019 9:00AM PT Jodie Comer, the “Killing Eve” actress who took home a best drama actress Emmy for her role in the series on Sunday, is in talks for Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel,” sources tell Variety. Comer will star alongside Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in the revenge drama from Disney-Fox. “The

SAN SEBASTIAN  —  While Donald Sutherland has never shied from speaking his mind, events of recent days have lent his voice an extra tremble of urgency. “The attitude at the U.N. is bullshit,” said the Canadian actor, echoing the frustrations of climate activist Greta Thunberg that world leaders are not reacting with sufficient gravity to

To a Western world that has in recent decades embraced the dogma of naturalism in acting, the acting methods and oral traditions that span centuries of Japanese history may seem foreign. It’s a craft that has been refined through generations of artists passing their legacy from father to son. This is the case for Motonari

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi has been cast as a morally and economically bankrupt matron in Italian director Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli’s movie adaptation of “The Time of Indifference,” author Alberto Moravia’s scathing critique of the Fascist-era bourgeoisie. Seràgnoli, a young helmer known for “Last Summer” and “Likemeback” – which bowed at the Rome and Locarno fests, respectively

Delphine Lehericey’s “Beyond the Horizon” may be playing the New Directors section at San Sebastian, but the young director is really anything but, having spent the last decade working in live theater and making a number of TV documentaries before, in 2013, making her fiction feature debut with another New Directors player, “Puppylove.” Based on

The Zurich Summit has, over the years, become a major industry gathering at the film festival, attracting Hollywood players and entertainment business reps from both sides of the Atlantic. Running Sept. 28-29 at the palatial Dolder Grand Hotel, the summit focuses on current business trends and the pertinent issues and challenges facing the industry. This

The 15th Zurich Film Festival (Sept. 26-Oct. 6) is marking a major changing of the guard while again presenting an impressive selection of high-profile international works and showcasing thelatest in Swiss cinema. Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” Rupert Goold’s “Judy” and James Mangold’s “Le Mans ’66” (aka “Ford v Ferrari”) are among the films screening in the

Wash Westmoreland, director of Keira Knightley starrer “Colette,” and Jessica Hausner, helmer of Cannes pic “Little Joe,” are among the jury heads at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. Westmoreland’s latest movie, “Earthquake Bird,” is part of the festival lineup; “Colette” screened at the fest last year. He will head the official competition jury. “In

SAN SEBASTIAN  —  Rouge International co-founder Nadia Turincev, whose credits included the Oscar-nominated “The Insult,” “Raw” and “Mimosas,” has teamed with Omar El Kadi, head of acquisitions and sales, EMEA, at Lebanon’s MC Distribution, to launch Easy Riders Films, a new Paris-based production company. If Easy Riders Films first titles are anything to go by

If two’s company then Navarre’s animation sector has officially become crowded with last week’s news that until-now Madrid-based animation production company The Thinklab will relocate their operations to the northern Spanish territory, joining already-established companies Apolo Films and Dr. Platypus & Ms. Wombat. The region has started to attract animation and post-production firms in the

SAN SEBASTIAN  —  The slums of Rio (“City of God”) and Casablanca (“Horses of God”), and now low-income youth, juggling love, broken families and bills in the proudly modern city of Barcelona: For many middle-class spectators, Spain’s “A Thief’s Daughter” will present as bracing an only-half-known reality – as the earlier-mentioned films. At its get-go,

September 25, 2019 7:16PM PT Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is developing a new “Star Wars” movie for Disney, Variety has learned. Feige will join Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy on an upcoming “Star Wars” film as she ushers in a new wave of “Star Wars” content, following the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga. The last film in

In today’s film news roundup, Fathom Events has set a one-night showing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of “The Twilight Zone” and “Lazy Susan” and “Liberte” get distribution. ANNIVERSARY SHOW Fathom Events and CBS Home Entertainment have scheduled a Nov. 14 showing for “The Twilight Zone: A 60th Anniversary Celebration” at more than 600 North

Russell Sanzgiri’s Counterpart Pictures has optioned the film rights to Tapas Media’s digital comic book “Blink,” Variety has learned exclusively. The comic, written by former DC Comics editor Rex Ogle and drawn by Eduardo Francisco, focuses on a young African-American girl pushed to the brink — until she screams at the top of her lungs,

DreamWorks Animation’s “Abominable” is a fantasy about a city girl and two cousins helping a Yeti travel across China to its Mount Everest home, but creating the film’s look with virtual lighting and production design required as much attention to detail as any live-action feature. Proprietary software allowed head of lighting Michael Necci and his

“Do you want an Oscar?” That’s the first question one top awards consultant asks any potential contender when they first start talking. Everyone is wondering how Brad Pitt would answer that question these days. He recently raised eyebrows and made headlines when he proclaimed that he would not be campaigning this awards season. “Oh, man. I’m

September 25, 2019 3:24PM PT Jason Bateman is in early negotiations to direct and star in Ryan Reynolds’ feature film based on the board game Clue for Fox and Disney. Reynolds boarded the project last year as part of a three-year first-look deal he had signed with Fox. Reynolds’ Maximum Effort banner announced at that point

The 2019 View Conference has added several new speakers, including “Frozen 2” VFX supervisor Steve Goldberg, who will present a preview of the much anticipated “Frozen 2” at the conference ahead of the film’s Nov. 22 opening. Goldberg has worked on several other Disney Animation projects including “Frozen,” “Tangled” and 1992’s “Aladdin,” for which he received a

SAN SEBASTIAN  —  Already backed by a four-way production partnership spanning Nicaragua, Mexico, the Netherlands and Germany, Nicaraguan Laura Baumeister’s stirring feature debut project “Daughter of Rage” swept three of the four prizes on offer at San Sebastian’s 8th Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum, which wrapped Wednesday night. The other big prize of the night, a

A timely yet undercooked action-thriller about police corruption and racism, “Black and Blue” cuts to the chase from its very first, promising sequence. Along the beats of Lecrae’s social injustice-themed “Welcome to America,” Alicia West (Naomie Harris) jogs through the middle-class streets of a suburban New Orleans neighborhood, only to be stopped and harassed by

“The Joker” is destined to be the super-villain movie of the season for most filmgoers, obviously. But there’s a certain breed of conservative that might save that honor for “Soros,” a new documentary about billionaire George Soros, the do-gooder bogeyman the right loves to hate. Dinesh D’Souza hasn’t yet gotten around to making a feature

September 25, 2019 10:30AM PT Universal’s “News of the World,” a historical drama starring Tom Hanks, will hit theaters just in time for awards season on Dec. 25, 2020. Paul Greengrass is directing the film, reuniting with Hanks for the first time since 2013’s “Captain Phillips.” “News of the World” is based on the best-selling

Receiving the 2019 Pioneer of the Year award from the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, Elizabeth Banks is leading in a new field. In addition to her achievements as an actor, director, producer and writer, Banks also devotes considerable time and money to a wide array of philanthropic efforts and organizations. And on Sept.

The documentary lineup at the New York Film Festival showcases largely hidden worlds of the city and nearby environs. When Tania Cypriano began filming Dr. Jess Ting at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital in 2017, he was one of only 40 surgeons in the United States who performed gender-confirming surgery. “A lot of films about the