Movies

When director Nisha Ganatra started planning “Late Night,” the new Emma Thompson–Mindy Kaling film about a failing late-night network talk show, she knew she’d need a house band and a theme for the program. Her first call was to composer Lesley Barber (“Manchester by the Sea”), with whom she had worked a few years ago on

In the past year, Alex Timbers has directed the Tony-nominated “Beetlejuice” and the stage adaptation of “Moulin Rouge!” (which begins previews June 28 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre). Here, he reflects on his most recent projects and the challenges of bringing two iconic movie musicals to Broadway within a year.  Both “Beetlejuice” and “Moulin Rouge!”

Amazon Studios’ “The Report,” a political thriller starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening, will have a two-week exclusive run in theaters starting Sept. 27 before landing on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 11. Amazon intends to continue rolling out the film in theaters even after its released on Prime as the studio continues to test

Randall Park will never forget his first paid acting gig. How could he? “It was on the Asian channel in L.A.,” the “Fresh Off the Boat” star recalls. “It was channel 18 and it was in Chinese and I didn’t understand a word of it. I to this day, I don’t even know what I

The number 4 typically doesn’t bode well for film franchises, which understandably has quite a few “Toy Story” fans feeling nervous. When it comes to constructing dramatic arcs across multiple movies, trilogies seem to offer a natural cycle, after which creatives must decide whether to reinvent (see “Fast & Furious,” “Mad Max: Fury Road”) or

For those who found too much fantasy in “Fifty Shades of Grey’s” depiction of S&M and its painful, cathartic pleasures, “Dogs Don’t Wear Pants” arrives as a welcome corrective. Though it doesn’t go in for explicit shock therapy, this inky comedy about a straitlaced widower who finds an alternative way to harness his grief —

June 13, 2019 8:02AM PT The friendly neighborhood Spider-Man couldn’t stay away from theaters for too long. Coming on the heels of his emotional appearance in “Avengers: Endgame,” Tom Holland’s web-slinging hero is headed back to multiplexes over the July 4 holiday weekend for “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” According to early tracking, Sony’s Marvel Comic entry is

Sales company Fortissimo Films has picked up international rights to three of the movies that will unspool in competition over the next ten days at the Shanghai International Film Festival. All are world premieres. Top feature director Zhang Yang (“Spicy Love Soup,” “Shower,”) makes an appearance with “The Sound of Dali,” a documentary that examines

“Cities of Last Things,” an award-winning Taiwanese black drama where the story is told in reverse chronological order, has been acquired for streaming by global online giant Netflix. The film is expected to be available on the platform from July 11. The film opens with images of a man hurling himself to his death off

There was a moment back in 2008 that casual science enthusiasts might remember, just before the Large Hadron Collider was first activated, when armchair observers experienced a frisson of semi-superstitious worry. The nuclear research device, after all, was specifically designed not just to discover the unknown but to create the conditions under which to examine

ANNECY–  France’s Annecy Animation Film Festival and Mexico’s Pixelatl will launch Short Way, an initiative to boost artistic animation shorts production by Latin American creators. The first call for projects will be made officially at the next Pixelatl Festival, which unspools in September in Cuernavaca, Pixelatl’s headquarters, 50 miles south of Mexico City. Among the

European movie technology company Motion will be in Shanghai from this week seeking investors and content partners for its online distribution tool. The company positions itself as enabling paid-for peer-to-peer streaming, by connecting movie producers and sales agents directly with their audience. Backed by a trio of companies — Cinemarket, White Rabbit and LeapDAO –

ANNECY  —  Set in a typical cosy Japanese suburb – – a two-storey detached tile-roofed house, leafy tree-lined streets, a garden – Netflix series “Dino Girl Gauko” delivers a sometimes riotous left-of-field portrait of the coming of age of an almost totally normal tween girl. Naoko Watanabi’s worries are typical: In “Dad’s Little Secret,·the episode

ANNECY  —  Set in a typical cosy Japanese suburb – – a two-storey detached tile-roofed house, leafy tree-lined streets, a garden – Netflix series “Dino Girl Gauko” delivers a sometimes riotous left-of-field portrait of the coming of age of an almost totally normal tween girl. Naoko Watanabi’s worries are typical: In “Dad’s Little Secret,·the episode

Eva Longoria, Patricia Arquette, Claire Forlani, Marta Milans and Julia Stiles are among stars expected on the island of Sardegna (or Sardinia for English speakers) for the second edition of the Filming Italy Sardegna Festival, the Italian summer shindig celebrating the ongoing crossover between high-end film and TV content and the power of women driving

For decades, Italy’s box office has suffered the summertime blues due to a scarcity of blockbusters from the Hollywood studios, which noted that Italian audiences were more interested in going to the beach than a movie theater. However, that is changing. The Filming Italy Sardegna Festival, which runs June 13-16 and is Italy’s single start

The new “Shaft” is an upgrade that’s also a downgrade. It’s not a “blaxploitation” movie, whatever that would now look like (at this point, the concept is meaningless). It is, rather, a rudely conventional, entertainingly junky badass-for-the-megaplex action comedy. Yet since the film has the audacity — or maybe it’s just the shameless huckster savvy

In today’s film news roundup, Seann William Scott’s “Already Gone” and “High Strung: Free Dance” get releases, and Tom Skerritt, Mira Sorvino and Chloe Coleman get cast. ACQUISITION Gravitas Ventures has acquired worldwide rights to the Seann William Scott road drama “Already Gone,” executive produced by Keanu Reeves, Variety has learned exclusively. Christopher Kenneally directed

Elizabeth Debicki is looking to the future — which makes sense, since she was named Women in Film and Max Mara’s “Face of the Future” for 2019. “No pressure,” Debicki laughed when Variety asked the actress about the honor on the red carpet. “It means a great deal. I have always deeply respected the work

Beta Cinema has acquired the dark, offbeat comedy “Patrick,” the feature debut of Flemish director Tim Mielants (“Peaky Blinders”), which will world premiere in competition next month at the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival. Variety has the exclusive trailer. Featuring Kevin Janssens (“Revenge,” “The Ardennes”), Jemaine Clement (“Flight of the Conchords,” “Legion”) and Bouli Lanners (“Rust and

Actress Sylvia Miles, who was Oscar-nominated for “Midnight Cowboy” and “Farewell, My Lovely,” died Wednesday at her home in New York. Her friends, journalist Michael Musto and actress Geraldine Smith, confirmed her death. She was reportedly 94, although she gave various accounts of her age. Celebrity journalist Musto, who was about to appear with Smith

June 12, 2019 2:08PM PT Netflix has hired “Coco” screenwriter Matthew Aldrich to oversee its live-action adaptations of C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” book series as films and TV shows. Aldrich will serve as a creative architect on all projects under the deal. He most recently co-wrote “Coco” with Adrian Molina for Disney and

Distributors and producers frequently bemoan the difficulty of understanding fast-moving audience trends in China. Affecting the outcome is the scale of country (some films skew toward northern or southern audiences, other titles play better in provincial towns than in the mega-cities and suburbs) and all are affected by word of mouth driven by ubiquitous social

The box office is going galactic. Sony’s “Men in Black: International” is expected to earn $30 million when it debuts in 4,200 North American this weekend. That kind of ticket sales would lag significantly below that of its predecessors, but it should still be enough to lead domestic box office charts. “MiB: International,” the fourth

Writer-director-animator and voice actor Brad Bird, composer Michael Giacchino and Pixar filmmaker Ralph Eggleston have been added to the list of top showbiz industry pros giving keynote addresses at the 2019 View Conference in Turin, Italy in October. It’s a reunion for the trio, who collaborated on Bird’s 2018 blockbuster “Incredibles 2,” with Giacchino writing

“I, Tonya” and “Late Night” star Paul Walter Hauser has signed on to star as the title character alongside Sam Rockwell in Clint Eastwood’s next film, “Richard Jewell,” sources tell Variety. The drama is based on Marie Brenner’s article in Vanity Fair chronicling the story of Jewell, a real-life security guard whose world was turned

WarnerMedia has appointed Christy Haubegger to the position of chief enterprise inclusion officer. Haubegger joins the team from CAA, where she spent 14 years working to increase representation of women and people of color in the content space and within the corporate culture of the agency. She will report directly to WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey,

New York-based Film Movement has acquired North American rights to Italian director Laura Luchetti’s “Twin Flower,” a dark tale of two teen runaways that launched last year from Toronto’s Discovery section and has since screened at a number of festivals, including London, Busan and Seattle. The film was sold to Film Movement by Italy’s Fandango

Atlas V, the thriving French VR company with three films premiering in Annecy’s inaugural VR competition lineup, has enlisted Tahar Rahim (“Looming Towers”) and Zita Hanrot (“Plan Coeur”) for Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado’s animated “Gloomy Eyes” and Pierre Zandrowicz’s sci-fi experience “Mirror,” respectively. “Mirror,” which is being presented at the Annecy Film Festival in

When Barry Rivers launched the Maui Film Festival two decades ago, he didn’t have a lot going for him. He was a documentary filmmaker whose previous festival experience had been as an attendee, and he didn’t have much money. But he did have one ace in the hole: a tropical island paradise. The festival hasn’t