April 15, 2019 7:40AM PT Mackenzie Nichols is joining Variety as a staff writer based out of New York. Nichols will be covering movies, TV, and theater. She previously worked as a freelance writer whose work has been published in the Boston Globe, the American Gardener Magazine, and Society of American Florists’ Floral Management magazine,
Movies
Bolstered by the performance of Universal Music Group, Vivendi posted a 10.7% year-on increase in revenue to €3.4 billion ($3.8 billion) during the first quarter of 2019, the company reported Monday. Vivendi said the company’s first quarter results were boosted by the growth of Universal Music Group whose revenues went up by 18.8% to €1.5
April 15, 2019 5:21AM PT Joan Collins has posted a video of the damage wrought by a fire at her London apartment and paid tribute to her husband, Percy, and the emergency services who responded to the incident. Collins was left needing treatment for smoke inhalation after the blaze at her apartment in the upmarket
For the second year in a row, a documentary feature won the Grand Prize at South Korea’s Wildflower Film Awards. “The Remnants” was directed by Kim Il-ran & Lee Hyuk-san. Jung Sung-il was named best documentary director for “Night and Fog in Zona.” Best director in the narrative category was Jeon Go-woon for “Microhabitat.” The
April 15, 2019 4:00AM PT Netflix has boarded Studiocanal and Blueprint Pictures’ Santa Claus origins movie “A Boy Called Christmas,” which has just started shooting. Jim Broadbent (“Paddington”), Kristen Wiig (“Bridesmaids”), and Sally Hawkins (“The Shape of Water”) will star. The ensemble cast also includes Zoe Colletti (“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”), Toby
MADRID — Freddie Highmore, star of ABC’s “The Good Doctor,” the top exported U.S. scripted series last year, has been joined on bank heist thriller “Way Down” by Liam Cunningham, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey and Sam Riley. Cunningham plays Sir Davos Seaworth in “Game of Thrones”; Astrid Bergès-Frisbey embodied mermaid Syrena in “Pirates of the Caribbean: On
April 15, 2019 3:02AM PT Hong Kong’s “P Storm” continued to wash over the China box office during another lackluster weekend. The film enjoyed an $18.5 million haul in its second weekend, down 55% from its $39.8 million opening, according to data from Artisan Gateway. The thriller is the fourth installment of a franchise that
The Cannes Film Festival is saluting director Agnès Varda with its official poster, which depicts the filmmaker, then in her mid-20s, shooting her first feature, 1955’s “La Pointe Courte.” The announcement reflects the enormous respect the director-cum-visual-artist had earned from Cannes and the film community worldwide as a pioneering director — the woman whose independent
April 14, 2019 11:17PM PT Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Turkish director responsible for “Three Monkeys” and”Once Upon A Time in Anatolia,” has been named as president of the jury for the competition section at this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival. He will head a jury that decides the Golden Goblet Awards. “Ceylan has a unique
Seen from the vantage of 2019, the extraordinary actresses who came to prominence in the films of Ingmar Bergman — Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, and the sunny and anguished, incandescent and heartbreaking Bibi Andersson, who died Sunday — enjoyed a relationship with their director that was rooted in a 20th-century male-gaze ethos. Bergman
“Project Gutenberg” took home all of the big prizes at the Hong Kong Film Awards on Sunday, including best film, best script and best director for writer-director Felix Chong. In total the counterfeiting thriller collected seven prizes, having been nominated in 17 categories. The film’s star Chow Yun-fat was beaten to the acting prize by
April 14, 2019 5:56PM PT Leaders of SAG-AFTRA have launched the process of crafting a proposal for a successor deal to its master contract covering feature film and primetime television. The union’s national board, meeting this weekend in Los Angeles, approved the establishment of the wages and working conditions committee, and appointed President Gabrielle Carteris
April 14, 2019 3:38PM PT Bibi Andersson, the Swedish actress who starred in 13 Ingmar Bergman films, died Sunday in Stockholm. She was 83. Director Christina Olofson confirmed her death to several outlets. Andersson had suffered a stroke in 2009 and was hospitalized. Andersson made a name herself after her type-defying role in 1966’s “Persona,”
John Rentsch, who served as director of international marketing and publicity for Paramount Pictures, died March 12 in Palm Springs, Calif. of complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 67. Born in Horsham, Australia, Rentsch started his career as a journalist, covering local government for the Australian newspaper. He moved to New York, where he started
Warner Bros.’ “Shazam!” dominated international box office charts again, generating $35.9 million from 79 overseas markets. The superhero tentpole was the No. 1 movie globally for the second weekend in a row. It added another $25 million in North America, taking ticket sales past $258.8 million worldwide. Internationally, “Shazam!” has earned $163.9 million. It saw
April 14, 2019 9:03AM PT “Bohemian Rhapsody” isn’t done rocking just yet. Fox and New Regency’s Queen musical has officially surpassed $900 million in ticket sales across the globe, continuing its mighty run as the highest-grossing music biopic of all time. As of Sunday, the Oscar-winning movie has generated $685 million internationally, along with an
Warner Bros.’ superhero adventure “Shazam!” took a victory lap at the domestic box office, retaining the No. 1 spot for the second weekend in a row. “Shazam!” added another $25 million in its sophomore outing, bringing its North American haul to $94 million. That sum was easily enough to top a crop of newcomers including
April 13, 2019 9:20PM PT A rural postal worker faces the unwanted end of her comfortable circumstances in writer-director Tom Quinn’s sensitive, serene drama. Populated by characters who rarely raise their voices, much less engage in anything that might qualify as “action,” “Colewell” is a character study that’s almost too subdued for its own good.
High-profile members of the Writers Guild of America, including Patton Oswalt, David Simon, Shawn Ryan, Michael Schur, John August, Amy Berg, Danny Zuker and many more have gone public with letters formally firing their agents in compliance with the WGA’s order to do so. The order from the WGA came down Friday night after negotiations
As a critic, I’m not privy to the backroom financial details of how the new “Hellboy” movie came together. (Those deals are kept close to the vest.) But looking at interviews with the participants, it seems fairly certain that the following things did not happen. Guillermo del Toro, director of the puckishly compelling “Hellboy” (2004)
A modestly budgeted, cannily made survival drama centered on a fictional coal mine explosion in Appalachia, “Mine 9” plays a little like a humble blueprint for a more extravagant Hollywood exercise in high-octane heroism: Squint a little, and you can see how Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg, say, would muscle out the solemn, simple narrative
Warner Bros.’ “Shazam!” is powering its way to a super second weekend, retaining its No. 1 spot at the box office with an estimated $22 million. Meanwhile, Lionsgate’s remake of “Hellboy” is getting scorched, with just $12 million estimated from 3,303 domestic locations in its debut weekend. That number would place it at No. 3
Last summer, Donald Glover snuck off to Cuba to create something — a feature film collaboration, or so the rumors had it, based on scant information other than a photo of Glover and Rihanna posed up during production of their mysterious “Guava Island” project. Creation is what Glover does best, constantly redefining audiences’ ideas of
April 12, 2019 7:51PM PT Universal Pictures is developing a wedding comedy after winning an auction for a pitch by Mindy Kaling, Priyanka Chopra and Dan Goor. Kaling, who will write the screenplay with Goor, is attached to star alongside Chopra and will potentially direct. Kaling will produce for her Kaling International, Chopra for Purple
April 12, 2019 6:43PM PT The New York Indian Film Festival has announced three of the films it will showcase during its annual week-long event in May. The festival, which will take place May 7-12 at the Village East Cinemas in Manhattan, will screen “Sir,” “Photograph” and “The Last Color” throughout the week, followed by
In today’s film news roundup, Leslie Jones and Kristen Bell get roles in “Queenpins,” “Sing 2” gets a new date and Sid Ganis launches a U.S.-China project. CASTINGS “Saturday Night Live” star Leslie Jones and Kristen Bell are attached to star as Phoenix housewives in “Queenpins.” The story centers on creation of a scheme to
April 12, 2019 6:01PM PT Elton John biopic “Rocketman” has been set for a May 16 world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Taron Egerton stars as John with Paramount Pictures distributing worldwide. It’s directed by Dexter Fletcher, who previously took the reins on Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” after director Bryan Singer was fired.
Leaders of the Writers Guild of America have told their 15,000 members to fire their agents. Members began sending the dismissal letters to agencies soon after the announcement that negotiations for a new agreement with agenices had collapsed. The unprecedented move came with the WGA’s negotiating committee announcing late Friday afternoon that it had not
Filmatique, one of the rising online distributors of international cinema, has launched its first Talents Initiative, an online film festival promoting first and second projects made by budding filmmakers from around the world. A portmanteau of “film” and “boutique,” the web site launched in 2017, releasing a single title each week under a monthly concentration,
Hollywood writers and agents are scheduled to make a final run at revamping the rules governing how agents represent writers with a potentially chaotic scenario approaching. Negotiations are scheduled to begin again at 3 p.m. PDT — a mere nine hours before the expiration of the current franchise agreement. The Writers Guild of America is