Pennywise is dancing back into audiences’ nightmares this fall, and the demonic creature is taking the form of a little old lady. Warner Bros. and New Line scared the expletive out of theater owners at CinemaCon on Tuesday with a terrifying look at the sequel to their 2017 smash “It.” The Losers’ Club has grown
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Esteemed actress Helen Mirren knows how to get a crowd of movie theater owners going — by hurling obscenities at their streaming competitors. “I love Netflix, but f— Netflix!” Mirren cheered onstage at CinemaCon, the annual convention of movie exhibitors, on Tuesday. She was met with thunderous applause, while talking up her new film “The
As the clock ticks down to Saturday’s deadline for the Writers Guild of America and talent agencies to reach a new franchise agreement, anxiety is rising over the impact on employment and dealmaking if writers and agents wind up parting ways. Industry sources said there have been back-channeling efforts among a handful of prominent showrunners
The Clown Prince of Crime made his Vegas debut. The crowd of exhibitors at CinemaCon, the annual trade show convention currently unfolding at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, got a first look at footage of Joaquin Phoenix’s “Joker.” It looks gritty and very, very, very dark. The footage shows Phoenix as a failed stand-up slowly
Ousted Warner Bros. Entertainment CEO Kevin Tsujihara received an emotional thank you at the top of the studio’s CinemaCon 2019 presentation on Tuesday in Las Vegas. Warner Bros. Film Chairman Toby Emmerich addressed the annual convention of movie theater owners, taking a victory lap for the diverse and top-earning films the studio released this year.
Advance ticket sales of “Avengers: Endgame” have broken first-day records — with the demand so great that it caused delays for many would-be purchasers. Online ticket seller Fandango reported Tuesday that the fourth “Avengers” movie topped its first-day U.S. sales record (previously held by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”) within the first six hours of
April 2, 2019 2:47PM PT The Boies/Schiller Film Group filed suit on Tuesday, accusing Emmett Furla Oasis of breaching a deal to produce two “Escape Plan” sequels starring Sylvester Stallone. Boies/Schiller was founded in 2012 by star litigator David Boies and Zack Schiller, the son of Jonathan Schiller — the co-founder of Boies’ law firm.
April 2, 2019 2:35PM PT Chadwick Boseman is remembering Nipsey Hussle. “Just remember that he was a person of his community, that he lifted up the people around him and that to me is everything,” the “Black Panther” star told Variety‘s Marc Malkin at Cinemacon on Tuesday. “It was authentic and I think that authenticity
Legendary Entertainment has acquired the feature film rights to Simon Rich’s short story “Any Person, Living or Dead,” with Kumail Nanjiani attached to star. Rich will adapt the script with Jonathan Krisel set to direct. The story was recently published by Little, Brown and Company in Rich’s collection of short stories titled “Hits and Misses,”
April 2, 2019 12:29PM PT The “Bad Moms” cinematic universe continues to grow. STX Films is revisiting its parental-figures-who-behave-poorly franchise with “Bad Moms’ Moms.” The film will presumably focus on the grandmother characters who were first introduced in 2017’s “A Bad Moms Christmas,” and who were played by Christine Baranski, Susan Sarandon, and Cheryl Hines.
April 2, 2019 12:20PM PT Longtime Motion Picture Association of America executive Joan Graves is recovering after a fall from the stage at CinemaCon. Graves fell and suffered a head injury Tuesday morning at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas after receiving an award for her career as chair of the MPAA ratings board. MPAA
When you’re king of Wakanda, you get big applauses just for showing up. “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman didn’t come to CinemaCon, the annual exhibition industry trade show unfolding this week in Las Vegas, to plug another “Avengers” movie. He was here to promote “21 Bridges,” a gritty action thriller that finds Boseman playing a
April 2, 2019 11:30AM PT Variety has been nominated in the best general video: news & politics, general social: entertainment and general social: celebrity/fan categories at the 2019 Webby Awards. The exclusive #MeToo video story “Tom Brokaw Accused of Sexual Harassment By Former NBC Anchor” competes against The New Yorker, ABC News, Time Magazine and Retro
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has warned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that its potential rule changes limiting the eligibility of Netflix and other streaming services for the Oscars could raise antitrust concerns and violate competition law. According to a letter obtained by Variety, the chief of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Makan
Zac Efron offers a chilling look at serial killer Ted Bundy in Netflix’s stark new trailer for the drama “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.” “Extremely Wicked” premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and portrays Bundy’s crimes from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer (Lily Collins), who refused to believe the truth
CinemaCon, the annual exhibition industry trade show unfolding this week in Las Vegas, has threatened to be overshadowed by ongoing tensions between theater owners and Netflix. Without mentioning the streaming giant by name, John Fithian, head of the theater business’s main lobbying firm, argued in public remarks that the two business models can be complementary,
Motion Picture Association of America CEO Charles Rivkin helped wake the early-morning crowd at the start of CinemaCon 2019 on Tuesday — by simultaneously welcoming a digital disruptor into his Hollywood lobby and reassuring theater owners that moviegoing isn’t really going anywhere. Addressing theater chain and indie cinema owners from around the world at the
The comic book movie boom shows no sign of slowing down, says Richard Gelfond, chairman and CEO of Imax Corporation. Just look at the success of “Captain Marvel,” the superhero flick that marked a first for Marvel Studios with a female lead and dominated the international box office, for evidence that movie studios are finding
Long before Reese Witherspoon or Nicole Kidman produced their own material, Bette Midler was calling all the shots on her productions. In 1985, she signed a blockbuster multi-movie deal at Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, making her the highest-paid actress of her time. But in addition to a massive paycheck, she also wanted to be empowered to make
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Bette Midler moved back to New York. But when she got there, she was unsettled by the garbage that she spotted everywhere. “It was unbelievable,” says the Tony-winning actress. “There were couches in the trees. There were burned-out cars by the road, and it just seemed as if the city
“Akira,” produced by Leonardo DiCaprio for Warner Bros., will shoot in California and receive an $18.5 million tax credit, the California Film Commission has announced. “Akira” was by far the biggest of the 18 tax credit allocations unveiled Tuesday under the state’s Film & TV Tax Credit Program 2.0, which include eight independent projects. The
CinemaCon kicked off with a subtle dig at Netflix and other streaming services. In his introductory remarks during the opening night presentation, Neon co-founder Tom Quinn lauded studios dedication to cinema with a slight jab at the streaming giant. “Cinema,” Quinn started as he took the stage at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. “It’s a
Iron Man is a perfect fit for virtual reality. The helmet, the physicality of his powers, the embodiment of his armor, they all lend themselves to a VR experience. While “Marvel’s Iron Man VR” is proof of that, creating an authentic experience required nailing one iconic visual, and it wasn’t easy. “One of the things
April 2, 2019 5:11AM PT Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Abel Ferrara’s biographical drama “Pasolini” which stars Willem Dafoe as the Italian writer and film director. “Pasolini” world premiered at Venice in 2014 and went on to play at Toronto and New York. The movie will have its long-awaited theatrical premiere in
The Ibero-American Fénix Awards film-TV awards have been cancelled, according to an official statement released Monday by event organizers, Cinema23. The prime reason behind the decision to end the awards is budget cuts to cultural programs applied by the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration, elected in July of last year. A celebration of the cinema
In today’s film news roundup, Kevin Hart, Mike Medavoy and “Princess of the Row” are receiving honors and Atom Tickets expands. AWARDS Kevin Hart will receive this year’s CinemaCon International Star of the Year award at the convention’s awards show on Thursday at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nev. “With his films continuously earning the
April 1, 2019 3:01PM PT “Green Book” has driven past the $300 million mark at the worldwide box office, thanks to its best picture Academy Award win and a stellar performance in China. The road-trip drama from Universal Pictures has grossed $84.5 million domestically and $219.6 million internationally in 62 markets via Amblin and Lionsgate,
If the events recounted in “Tread” had not occurred in real life, you might mistake any synopsis of its storyline for a treatment written by some grindhouse-cinema aficionado as a tribute to ‘70s rural-revenge thrillers. Indeed, Paul Solet’s remarkably absorbing and suspenseful documentary often plays like the dark flip side of that audience-stoking subgenre —
April 1, 2019 11:17AM PT Ai Weiwei follows ‘Human Flow’ with a second, shorter documentary on the European migrant crisis that aims squarely for the heart. Something that tends to get lost in the political discourse around the European migrant crisis — as right-wing gatekeepers promote myths of hungry foreign invaders, countered by left-wing checking
Not many, if any, of the great music documentaries or concert films have ever screened in the exact location where they were shot: “Woodstock” did not show at Woodstock, and “Wattstax” did not premiere at the L.A. Coliseum, needless to say. But Sunday night, “Amazing Grace” had its official southern California premiere right where the