Movies

August 29, 2019 3:13PM PT Anna Kendrick will star in the independent crime thriller “Unsound” with Bharat Nalluri directing from a screenplay by Matthew Ross and Christopher Edwards. XYZ and CAA Media Finance are financing and handling sales at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. Both companies are representing the U.S. rights. “Unsound” will center

Variety has announced its 10 Screenwriters to Watch for 2019, an honor the publication has bestowed for over a decade. This year’s honorees will be feted in the October 8th issue of Variety as well as at a reception at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 13th. “For decades, the Mill Valley Film Festival

Rüdiger Böss, for over a decade one of the best-known and liked acquisitions executives in the international television business, is to join Constantin Film, Germany’s leading independent movie producer and distributor — responsible for the hugely successful “Resident Evil” franchise — and an increasingly important producer of international TV series. Until last year, Böss served

In the opening sequence of “Ad Astra,” Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), a veteran U.S. astronaut, is doing what he does at the top of a space antenna, an elaborate piece of technological scaffolding so tall that it juts right up from the earth into the outer void. (It’s enough to make that famous 1932 photograph

August 29, 2019 12:30PM PT Morgan Freeman and Frank Grillo are starring in the action movie “Panama” with Daniel Adams directing from a script he co-wrote with William R. Barber. Highland Film Group will handle worldwide sales, which will launch at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. “Panama” will be produced by Michelle Chydzik Sowa and

A producer on Roman Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy” said he considered pulling the movie from the Venice Film Festival after jury president Lucrecia Martel declared she would “not congratulate” the director. But after Martel clarified her statement, which some had interpreted as a refusal to consider the film for an award, the film’s

Laverne Cox is known for breaking barriers in Hollywood but even she was surprised to be breaking into the music charts with her single “Welcome Home.” “Oh, my God! It’s number six on the charts!” Cox exclaimed to Variety at the special screening of “Can You Keep A Secret?” on Wednesday night at the Arclight

August 29, 2019 11:14AM PT Dylan O’Brien has joined Mark Wahlberg in the upcoming action thriller “Infinite,” sources tell Variety. “Kingsman” actress Sophie Cookson will also appear in the film with “Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua helming. “Infinite” is based on D. Eric Maikranz’s novel “The Reincarnationist Papers,” which centers on the Cognomina, a secret

Diane Keaton and Jeremy Irons are set to star in the independent romantic comedy “Love, Weddings and Other Disasters” with Dennis Dugan directing from his own script. Fortitude will introduce “Love, Weddings and Other Disasters” to buyers at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival. The female-driven, multi-story rom-com follows the people who work to create the

Among the true legends of Hollywood’s stunt profession, Mickey Gilbert has always performed a notch above the rest. The stunt double for Robert Redford from 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” through 2018’s “The Old Man & the Gun,” Gilbert has more than 100 film and TV credits as a stunt coordinator and a

“Marriage Story” is the Noah Baumbach movie we’ve been waiting for. It’s better than good; it’s more than just accomplished. After 10 features, released over a quarter century of filmmaking (his debut, “Kicking and Screaming,” came out in 1995; his other films include “The Squid and the Whale,” “Greenberg,” and “Frances Ha”), this, at long

August 29, 2019 9:52AM PT [embedded content] Netflix has debuted the first trailer for Fernando Meirelles’ “The Two Popes,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. Hopkins stars as Pope Benedict XVI and Pryce as current pontiff Pope Francis in an intimate story about one of the most dramatic transitions of power in the Catholic Church’s history.

“If no one is dying, nothing is exploding and no one is trying to kill each other, you shouldn’t be calling me,” says Jane Wu, a storyboard artist with credits including “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “Thor: Ragnarok” and Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of “Mulan.” Wu is one of the few women who work in this

How “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” will button up the final trilogy of the epic space saga is surely on the minds of many fans in the run-up to its release on Dec. 20.  But a revealing sizzle reel, shown at the Disney’s D23 Expo this past weekend, left fans feeling a disturbance in

Kirsten Dunst had a secret. When shooting 2016’s “Hidden Figures,” she was struggling with how to portray Vivian Mitchell, a supervisor to Octavia Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan that barely hides her hostility and contempt for the mathematician. “You know what my secret was?” Dunst says with a laugh. “I pretended that my character was in love

When the Venice Film Festival offers Pedro Almodóvar, above, a lifetime achievement award, the festival will be honoring not one, but two careers. Though he’s often shied from the spotlight, producer Agustín Almodóvar has worked in lockstep with his older brother for over 30 years. The siblings founded production house El Deseo in 1986, and

French New Wave director and noted aficionado of non-linear storytelling Jean-Luc Godard was famously quoted as saying, “I agree that a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end but not necessarily in that order.” The sheer number of good nonlinear films, where the events of the story are not shown in chronological

Beta Cinema has acquired Mahnaz Mohammadi’s Toronto Film Festival entry “Son-Mother” (Pesar-Madar). The Iranian-Czech co-production will have its world premiere at the festival in the Discovery section on Sept. 7. Mohammadi has made a name for herself with documentaries on social issues such as “Women Without Shadows” and “Travelogue,” in which she interviewed passengers on

Gabrielle Carteris has been re-elected president of SAG-AFTRA, fending off challenges from Matthew Modine and three other contenders. Carteris won handily with 13,537 votes to 10,682 for Modine and 5,048 for Jane Austin, 1,096 for Queen Alljahye Searles and 367 for Abraham Justice. The results were announced early Thursday morning at 4 a.m. following one

Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit,” Marielle Heller’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and Tom Harper’s “The Aeronauts” will receive gala presentations at the 63rd BFI London Film Festival. Announcing the full program lineup Thursday, festival director Tricia Tuttle also revealed that new films from veteran filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones and “Still Alice” director Wash Westmoreland will world-premiere

Oliver Stone will serve as the jury president of the international competition at this year’s Zurich Film Festival, it was announced Thursday. The Oscar-winning filmmaker will also present his Showtime documentary series “The Putin Interviews” and the restored version of his 1991 film “The Doors” at the festival. “Oliver Stone is an edgy Hollywood auteur

August 29, 2019 1:45AM PT Writer-director Malik Bader recalls ‘70s crime dramas in his brutal thriller about a memory-impaired money launderer pursued by dirty cops. Fairly early in “Killerman,” a punishingly brutal thriller about a memory-impaired money launderer caught between murderous dirty cops and an ambitious Slavic gangster, writer-director Malik Bader (“Cash Only”) more or

A record number of virtual reality productions from Taiwan will be featured at this year’s 76th Venice Film Festival, raising the hopes of the lackluster film industry in Taiwan, which has been quietly transforming itself into a next-generation content production hub through technological advancement. While Taiwan’s tech giant HTC, which has been developing not only

In today’s film news roundup, “Ghostbusters” tickets go on sale, the AARP sets its awards show and Matthew McConaughey is named a professor. ANNIVERSARY RELEASE Fathom Events and Sony Pictures have started selling tickets to a 35th anniversary presentation of “Ghostbusters” on Oct. 6 and 10 at more than 600 theaters. The screenings will feature an introduction with

Summer moviegoing season looks to end on a soft note. Labor Day should bring another quiet weekend for the film industry, closing out an August that lacked some much needed luster. With a shortage of high-profile releases, last weekend’s champ “Angel Has Fallen” is likely to remain victorious on domestic box office charts. The third

William Schmidt, who’s challenging incumbent WGA West president David Goodman in the upcoming election, has accused guild leadership of bringing chaos to the industry. Schmidt, whose credits include “Yellowstone,” “Outsiders” and “Charmed,” has campaigned for the past two months in opposition to Goodman’s directive for members to fire their agents if they had not signed

Jill Soloway will direct and adapt the upcoming memoir “Mothertrucker” for Makeready. The film unites the “Transparent” creator with Julianne Moore, who will take the showy starring role. The deal was inked two years before “Mothertrucker” hits store shelves. The book by Amy Butcher chronicles her friendship with Joy Mothertrucker (Moore), an Instagram celebrity and

When the big-screen adaptation of “It” debuted at the box office in 2017, it landed with a massive splash — becoming the highest grossing R-rated horror film in history, raking in the biggest box office sales for an adaptation of a Stephen King novel and eventually earning more than $700 million worldwide. So as “It:

Phyllis Nagy, who is challenging Writers Guild of America West’s president David Goodman, is calling for a change in strategy in regard to the current stalemate between the WGA and Hollywood agents. “After nearly a half year’s stasis, it’s necessary to recognize that a change in strategy is called for—and that’s what we offer. A negotiated solution

French film industry veterans Gilles Sousa and Marie Garrett, the duo behind Bac Films’ thriving international sales division, are teaming up with Logical Pictures to launch the Paris-based sales outfit Pulsar Content. The banner has also announced a partnership with Nicolas Winding Refn. The production and financing outfit Logical Pictures was launched in Cannes 2016