Movies

July 24, 2019 12:09PM PT Universal’s “Yesterday,” a musical fantasy set to the Beatles biggest hits, made it the $100 million mark with a little help from its fans. The milestone is a counterprogramming win for the original romantic-comedy in a summer season that’s otherwise been dominated by superhero fare and big-budget blockbusters. After four

Movies by Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, David Cronenberg, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luis Bunuel and Federico Fellini are among the lineup of the Venice Classics section at the 76th Venice Film Festival. A new 35mm print of Scorsese’s 1977 film “New York, New York” will be screened in honor of United Artists’ centennial. The new copy, playing

July 24, 2019 11:30AM PT “The Last Black Man in San Francisco’s” Jonathan Majors is set to star in the Netflix pic “The Harder They Fall” with Jay-Z on board to produce. British musician Jeymes Samuel, better known by his stage name the Bullitts, is on board to direct and had previously worked with Jay-Z

July 24, 2019 11:00AM PT “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke has come on board the Viking fantasy-adventure “Heathen” for Constantin Film and Prime Universe Films. Hardwicke will direct from a script by Kerry Williamson, based on Vault Comic’s series by Natasha Alterici. She will also executive produce. The stories center on the warrior Aydis, an outcast gay woman born into

Michael Palin will undergo heart surgery in September. The Monty Python star said a health check several years ago revealed a heart problem, but it had not affected his fitness until recently. Telling fans about the upcoming operation on his website, Palin, 76, said he expects to recover from the procedure by the end of

Regal Entertainment, the country’s second-largest theater chain, will no longer sell tickets to the movies it exhibits on Atom Tickets, Variety has learned. The two companies quietly ended their agreement in July when Regal opted not to renew its deal with the ticketer. The partnership started in 2016. “Atom has more than 60 exhibitors on

“If the audience didn’t believe in the tattoos, we were dead before we even began,” says director Guy Nattiv of “Skin,” a reality-based drama about white supremacist Bryon Widner, who renounced those beliefs and his body-covering markings.  So Nattiv tapped Emmy-winning makeup maestro Stephen Bettles for the job — a massive project that Bettles says

In Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Leonardo DiCaprio plays a fading Hollywood star in the 1960s who has been reduced to guest spots on television shows and spaghetti westerns in Italy. While the Oscar winning actor doesn’t have to worry about fading anytime soon, he did tell Variety’s Marc Malkin on Monday

Dominique Boutonnat, a film executive who was an associate producer of “Two Days in Paris,” “Polisse” and “The Intouchables,” has been appointed president of France’s National Film Board, or CNC. The government-backed organization plays a key role in the allocation of film and TV subsidies, as well as establishing rules applying to the local industry.

July 24, 2019 6:33AM PT Veteran Hong Kong actor Simon Yam was released from the hospital Wednesday after being stabbed five days earlier at a promotional event in mainland China. Yam, 64, whose vast body of work includes a significant role in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – Cradle of Life,” left the private Adventist Hospital

July 24, 2019 6:07AM PT Veteran actress Piper Perabo is running as an independent candidate for a SAG-AFTRA national board seat representing New York members, Variety has learned. She’s supporting Matthew Modine for president, who is challenging incumbent Gabrielle Carteris through the Membership First slate. Perabo is best known for ABC’s “Notorious” and her role

Eric Névé, a prominent French producer whose credits include Ziad Doueiri’s Oscar-nominated “The Insult,” has died. Névé, 57, was the founder of the Paris-based production banner La Chauve-Souris and co-founder of the international sales company Indie Sales and its sister outfit Indie Prod. He died Sunday. Through La Chauve-Souris, which he launched in 1995, Névé

WarnerMedia was AT&T’s fastest-growing division in the second quarter of 2019. But the telco showed ongoing signs of trouble in its pay-TV business, with DirecTV and DirecTV Now again posting subscriber losses — and HBO dropping U.S. customers in the period. Revenue for WarnerMedia was $8.35 billion, up 5.5% year over year primarily driven by

DURBAN–The 10th edition of the Durban FilmMart, the industry program of the Durban Intl. Film Festival, was perhaps its biggest yet, and the popularity of new strands such as the Durban Does Docs forum and the Engage @ DFM diversity program highlighted how the market continues to grow from strength to strength. “We wanted to ensure

DURBAN–“Les Misérables,” French director Ladj Ly’s riveting portrayal of racial division and unrest in the banlieues of Paris, won best picture at the 40th Durban Intl. Film Festival Tuesday night. The jury described the film, which shared the jury prize in Cannes this year, as “a searing portrait of modern France which takes on issues of police brutality,

July 24, 2019 3:01AM PT A crowdfunding campaign launched by U.S. animation distributor Sentai Filmworks to assist Kyoto Animation has passed the $2 million mark. The Japanese studio was the victim of an arson attack last Thursday that killed 34 people and injured 34 more. Among the contributors is software giant Adobe, which anonymously donated

Specialty film sales agent Asian Shadows has picked up international rights to “Coming Home Again,” by Wayne Wang, one of Asia’s most celebrated directors. The film, which tackles food, family and mortality, will premiere as a special presentation at the Toronto festival in September. Based on a short story of the same name, published in

When I was growing up, we learned that the moral cornerstone of the First Amendment — the very essence of it — is that it’s about protecting the speech you don’t like. If the Nazis aren’t allowed to march in Skokie (a major test case in the 1970s), then a treacherous principle gets laid down: that

Rachel Mason grew up believing that her parents ran a small bookstore in Los Angeles. She wasn’t entirely mistaken, although the naive young woman — then an artsy teen, now a documentary filmmaker — never imagined that, as her mother Karen bluntly tells her on camera, “at one point, we were probably the biggest distributor

July 23, 2019 4:15PM PT Leonardo DiCaprio is nervous traditional filmmaking may be in danger of extinction. “We’re entering this age of streaming where things are so immediate and all of a sudden you have a new show, eight episodes of a new brilliant show that comes on that you can watch almost every other

DURBAN–Director Ashley Lazarus, whose film about the interracial friendship between two young boys during the apartheid era became a South African cult classic in the 1970s, is set to return to the big screen with a film that builds on his life-long passion for early-childhood education. “Teacher Wanted” is the inspirational story of a teacher

Free Association, a production company led by Channing Tatum, Peter Kiernan and Reid Carolin, has entered into a film development fund with Atwater Capital. The four-year $2 million revolving fund stipulates that Atwater will finance a minimum of five films with Free Association. Michael Parets, VP of production, will oversee the deal. Free Association will

Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt’s characters in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” will have to take on much more than a changing showbiz landscape. This weekend, the washed-up actor and his majordomo are battling Disney’s juggernaut “The Lion King” at the domestic box office. Tarantino’s R-rated auteur

Over the last 10 years, Margot Robbie has stepped into the skates of Tonya Harding, taken up the mantle of Harley Quinn and, next up, she’s playing the world’s most famous doll, Barbie. The live-action film is due out in 2020 and set to be written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, while Robbie serves

Ben Lopez has seen the future of the entertainment industry, and says it is the Latinx community. “In the next 20 years, we’re going to be prioritized — because not only will we have the numbers demographic-wise, we’ll have the spending power,” says Lopez, the executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Independent Producers,

Kevin Feige’s announcement of Marvel Studios’ Phase 4 was one of the biggest stories to come out of San Diego Comic Con this year. While there was only a tease about “Guardians of the Galaxy 3,” franchise star Chris Pratt is definitely excited about the latest updates to the universe. “Oh my God, I cannot

Benedict Cumberbatch (“Avengers: Endgame”) and Claire Foy (“The Crown”) are set to star in “Louis Wain,” a biopic of the prolific English artist who rose to prominence at the end of the 19th century. “Louis Wain” will start shooting on Aug. 10 with BAFTA-nominated Will Sharpe (“Flowers”) directing the film, which was written by Sharpe

James Cameron is heading back underwater in “Mission OceanX,” a series for National Geographic that will follow a groundbreaking ocean exploration mission. The “Titanic” and “The Abyss” director is no stranger to the deep, having dived down to the Mariana Trench in a submarine in 2012, among other aquatic missions. “Mission OceanX” will follow the

Production resumed Tuesday on “Fast & Furious 9,” a day after an accident at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, near London, left a stuntman in hospital. The U.K. agency responsible for workplace safety confirmed that it is now investigating the accident. The stuntman, Joe Watts, was working on a second unit when he sustained head injuries

DURBAN–From the arresting opening sequence, in which the reflection of a woman carrying a giant wooden cross shimmers across the surface of a lake, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s “Mother, I Am Suffocating. This is My Last Film About You” embarks on a poetic journey across an unnamed African landscape. Described by the filmmaker as a “lament,”