Movies

We tend to think of the Patty Hearst affair as a chain of galvanic events, because that’s what a lot of it was. The kidnapping itself, on Feb. 4, 1974. The weeks that Hearst spent in a closet, blindfolded, subjected to death threats, which wound up (intentionally or not) as the psychological trigger for her

Marten Rabarts, current head of EYE International at the EYE Film Museum Netherlands, has been appointed Film Festival Director – Kaiurungi to lead the New Zealand International Film Festival. He starts the new position in October 2019 and will oversee the 2020 edition. The 2019 NZIFF, taking place in July and August, has been programmed

“Avengers: Endgame” shattered just about every conceivable opening weekend box office record with its unprecedented $1.22 billion global debut. The hype surrounding Marvel’s epic finale is nothing like Hollywood has seen before. But does the blockbuster have enough momentum to become the highest grossing movie of all time? That distinction currently belongs to James Cameron’s

John Singleton had just turned 24 when the Academy Award nominations were announced in January 1992, making him the youngest filmmaker ever to compete for a best director statue — as well as the first African-American to do so. This was a quarter-century before #OscarSoWhite hashtag started holding the Academy to task for slighting voices

April 29, 2019 2:30PM PT Hollywood is reeling after news broke on Monday that John Singleton has died at the age of 51. The Oscar-nominated director of “Boyz n the Hood” and “Shaft” suffered a debilitating stroke two weeks ago. On social media, filmmakers and actors such as Jordan Peele, Regina King, and Robert Townsend

Universal Pictures and CJ Entertainment are teaming up for a remake of the hit Korean comedy “Extreme Job” with Kevin Hart eyeing the starring role and Tracy Oliver on board to write the adapted screenplay. CJ Entertainment is developing and producing the remake along with Hart’s HeartBeat production banner with Francis Chung producing for CJ

John Singleton, writer-director of “Boyz n the Hood” and industry pioneer, who was the first African American to earn an Oscar nomination for best director, has died. He was 51.  Singleton suffered a stroke after experiencing weakness in his legs, and was admitted to the hospital on April 17. He was taken off life support

“Avengers: Endgame” directors Joe and Anthony Russo spent their weekend gobsmacked over the record-obliterating opening weekend of Marvel’s biggest film to date. “We were definitely surprised. We knew the movie was good but you can never predict something like this,” said Anthony Russo, speaking at a keynote conversation with CNBC anchor Julia Boorstin at the

April 29, 2019 11:23AM PT BRON Studios has partnered with Good Fear and Kituufu Films to develop and produce “Sabrina,” the story of NFL superstar DeAndre Hopkins’ mother, Sabrina Greenlee, as a feature film. “My mom has always put everyone before herself and sacrificed things unimaginable. Now it’s time for people to see her true

Fresh off the record-obliterating opening weekend of “Avengers: Endgame,” directors Joe and Anthony Russo waded into the ongoing debate about the arms race over streaming platforms. Discussing the similarities between the tentpole film business and the huge-spending streaming content marketplace, Joe Russo spoke plainly about who is leading the charge for the latter. “The closest

April 29, 2019 11:18AM PT “X-Men” star Nicholas Hoult is set to join Angelina Jolie the wilderness thriller “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” sources tell Variety. Insiders add that Tyler Perry has also joined the cast in an undisclosed role. Taylor Sheridan is directing the movie, which is based on Michael Koryta’s novel about 14-year-old

April 29, 2019 10:57AM PT The Cannes Film Festival has announced the full jury for the 2019 edition. Joining president Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu will be actresses Elle Fanning and Maimouna N’Diaye (“Gardens in Autumn”) as well as Oscar-nominated filmmakers Yorgos Lanthimos, whose last film “The Favourite” earned Olivia Colman a best actress Oscar, and Paweł

April 29, 2019 10:16AM PT Writer-director John Singleton, a pioneering African-American filmmaker and TV producer, will be taken off of life support today, nearly two weeks after he suffered a debilitating stroke. Singleton’s family issued a statement Monday citing the “agonizing decision” to remove him from life support at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los

Veteran actor Matthew Modine is running for president of SAG-AFTRA as the head of the ticket for the  Membership First faction of the performers union. Modine was first elected as a member of the SAG-AFTRA national board in 2017. He’s the first candidate to announce for the presidency. Current president Gabrielle Carteris, who won a

Indie Sales, the French international sales boutique behind the Oscar-nominated “My Life as a Zucchini” and Ziad Doueiri’s “The Insult,” is set to branch out with the launch of Best Friend Forever (BFF), a new Brussels-based outfit dedicated to festival-driven world cinema. Best Friend Forever is kicking off with the acquisition of Juris Kursietis’ sophomore

The making of “Apocalypse Now” wasn’t easy for director Francis Ford Coppola. In fact, it seemed doomed from the start. During a talk on Sunday for the Tribeca Film Festival, Coppola sat down with director Steven Soderbergh for the film’s 40th anniversary to chat about the setbacks, which started with “everybody saying it was a

Kino Lorber, in association with blockchain-powered TVOD platform Breaker, has acquired North American rights to Beniamino Barrese’s documentary “The Disappearance of My Mother,” which had its world premiere at the Sundance Festival earlier this year, Variety has learned exclusively. The deal was announced Monday at the Hot Docs Canadian Intl. Documentary Film Festival. It was negotiated by

The words “away with the fairies” tend to be used pejoratively, though if you applied it to Ragnhildur “Ragga” Jónsdóttir, she’d calmly and cheerfully accept at least part of the phrase. It’s the “away” bit to which she’d object: In Jónsdóttir’s view, she’s very much present with the elves, trolls and sprites who make up

April 29, 2019 6:03AM PT Gravitas Ventures has picked up U.S. rights for the documentary “Inside Lehman Brothers,” which chronicles the story of the whistleblowers who paid the price for exposing the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, Variety has learned exclusively. Gravitas announced the deal, which includes digital and TV rights, on Monday at the Hot Docs Canadian

Inside Out, Canada’s largest LGBTQ film festival, distributor, and booster of LGBTQ content, has unveiled to Variety the 10 feature projects and eight international executives participating in its third annual Finance Forum. “There’s a great variety to the projects this year,” Inside Out executive director Andria Wilson said before the official Finance Forum announcement. “We’ve got docs

Muhammad Ali’s bark was as formidable as his bite, and “What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali” pays tribute to both, allowing the three-time heavyweight champ to narrate his own story via a combination of audio and video archival material. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day,” “The Equalizer”), this 165-minute documentary uses copious interview soundbites to highlight

Last year, for the first time in its 25-year history, the Hot Docs film festival achieved gender parity in its slate, at a time when many other large cinema organizations were just signing – or still working towards – their versions of 50/50 by 2020, the influential gender equality model for film funding launched by

The singularly idiosyncratic casting of Charlotte Rampling and Willie Nelson as long-married ex-vaudevillians who operate a combination trailer park, horse ranch, and performance venue could be enough of a novelty factor to attract some curiosity seekers to “Waiting for the Miracle to Come.” But the movie itself, a deliberately paced fantasia of remembrance and reconciliation,

The astonishing five-day haul of $331 million (RMB2.22 billion) for “Avengers: Endgame” in China has set a record for the country’s highest-grossing opening weekend of any film, Western or local, and puts the Marvel finale on track to eclipse in about one week what its predecessor, “Infinity War,” made during its entire monthlong run in the

“Slay the Dragon” is the most important political film of the year, and it may prove to be one of the key political films of the decade. It’s a documentary about gerrymandering, and offhand it would be hard to think of a subject less sexy — or a phrase less inviting to audiences than “a

As with many veterans of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which is being renamed Film at Lincoln Center to mark its 50th Anniversary this week, longtime former executive director Joanne Koch has some stories to tell. “We tried to get Katharine Hepburn at the Chaplin Gala, and she wrote me and said she’d rather

From “Mean Streets” to their upcoming “The Irishman,” Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese have one of film’s most famous (and long-running) actor/director partnerships. The two talked about their decades of work together at the Tribeca Film Festival (which De Niro co-founded) on Sunday afternoon, touching on the dynamics of their partnership, Scorsese’s hesitance to

What must it be like to play poker with Christoph Waltz? For all his charms, subtlety doesn’t seem to come naturally to the German actor. Granted, Waltz was a revelation as the unnervingly charming Nazi colonel in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” but in most of the roles that have followed, he’s tipped his hand with

Olivia Wilde didn’t have trouble finding a diverse cast for her high-school comedy “Booksmart.” “It turns out when you see all actors and you just hire the best people, you actually end up with a really representative set. The problem is most people don’t look at everyone. If we keep drawing from the same pool,

April 28, 2019 10:13AM PT Disney-Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” has set more than a dozen box office records in its first five days — many by wide margins. These are some of the records the superhero tentpole is destroying on its first weekend at the box office: Biggest Worldwide Opening: “Avengers: Endgame” grossed $1.2 billion worldwide.