Movies

Awkwafina and Ike Barinholtz will produce and star in STXfilms’ comedy caper “Crime After Crime.” Awkwafina will portray a millennial podcast host who agrees to help a convict that she has devoted her true-crime podcast to prove his innocence after he escapes jail and turns up at her house. Dan Gurewitch and David Young are

Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloe Sevigny are bespectacled — and deadpan — small-town sheriff’s deputies battling an army of zombies in the first trailer for Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die.” “In this peaceful town, on these quiet streets, something terrifying, something horrifying is coming,” a voiceover intones, followed by the town’s cafe getting

As it prepares to launch a fully staffed Paris office and beefs up its roster of French series and movies originals, Netflix commissioners Sara May, Damien Couvreur, Dominique Bazay and Diego Buñuel discussed the particularities of their development process and deal-making with the French industry, as well as their diversity-friendly approach, at Series Mania. Although

Queen Latifah will appear in and produce the teen comedy “Paper Chase” movie through her Flavor Unit production company along with Gunpowder & Sky. Latifah and Shakim Compere, who founded Flavor Unit in 1995, will executive produce with Gunpowder & Sky’s Van Toffler. “Paper Chase” was created by writers Angela Tucker and Lauren Domino. Tucker

British actress and model Tania Mallet, who played Tilly Masterson in the 1964 James Bond classic “Goldfinger,” has died. She was 77. The official James Bond Twitter account announced her death on Sunday. “We are very sorry to hear that Tania Mallet who played Tilly Masterson in ‘Goldfinger’ has passed away,” the tweet reads. “Our

April 1, 2019 8:07AM PT A Roger Waters “Us + Them” tour film will get an event cinema release later this year after Trafalgar Releasing landed the rights. The tour took in 156 shows and countries and regions including Australia, Latin America and North America. Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, played tracks from his career

In the era of “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” it’s clear that Hollywood has finally begun to prioritize making entertaining, big-budget films that acknowledge the cultural diversity of U.S. moviegoers. A 2017 CAA study found that across every budget level, films with diverse casts outperformed films with less diversity, and nonwhite moviegoers now account

CinemaCon, the annual lovefest between studios and theater owners, unfolds this week in Las Vegas. In Sin City, exhibitors will be treated to a look at the upcoming slates from Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros., and other major Hollywood players, while being reassured that nothing, not Netflix nor franchise fatigue, will endanger the theatrical experience. Here

Petri Kempinnen, CEO of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond, one of the region’s major film-TV financiers, will step down on Oct. 31. His departure – for personal reasons to spend more time with his family in Helsinki – ends a near six-year mandate which has seen the ahead-of-the-curve Finnish executive react quickly to or

April 1, 2019 1:54AM PT Despite a lack of blockbuster competition, Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” didn’t fly all that far in its China opening, failing to soar past a nostalgic Chinese drama already in its second week as sentimental human-interest dramas filled many of the top spots. Er Dong Pictures’ “Song of Youth” was the weekend’s

Xinjiang-set “A First Farewell” was named the best film in the Chinese section of the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s Firebird awards competition for young film makers. Montenegro-based Ivan Salatic’s “You Have The Night’ won the equivalent award in the rest of the world section. Prizes were awarded at a ceremony on Sunday evening. The

March 31, 2019 8:34PM PT American horror thriller “Us” debuted on top of the South Korean box office. The UPI release opened on Wednesday (Mar. 27), and earned $6.98 million from 936,400 admissions over five days.The previous weekend’s winner, Korean crime drama “Money” slipped to second place. The Showbox release earned $4.73 million from 601,900

March 31, 2019 5:51PM PT SAG-AFTRA has announced support for the Writers Guild of America in its acrimonious battle to tighten restrictions on talent agents. “We congratulate the Writers Guild of America on their successful membership vote and applaud the Guild for taking steps in the best interests of their members,” SAG-AFTRA said. “We stand

For more than a century, movies as a medium have served to reinforce a certain view of female sexuality that served to benefit … whom? Not the female sex, really, but men — or a male-dominated culture that wanted women to be more receptive to their advances, on one hand, even as it reinforced the

The 95%-vote majority in the WGA’s referendum on imposing a tough new code of conduct for talent agents sends a clear signal to the industry. The WGA is gearing up for tough negotiations in the coming year with the major studios on the master film and TV contract that expires May 1, 2020. During the

“Dumbo” took flight this weekend, landing atop both domestic and international box office charts. Overseas, the high-flying elephant generated $71 million when it debuted in 53 foreign territories. “Dumbo” launched below expectations in North America with $45 million for a global start of $116 million. The film saw the best start in China ($10.7 million),

Director Michael Lehmann was shocked when he looked at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times entertainment sections and saw there were no ads for the second week of dark high school comedy “Heathers.” When the film opened on March 31, 1989, the indie film studio New World had taken out ads for the

Sunday, March 31 marks the 20th anniversary of landmark film “The Matrix,” a movie about a multitude of ideas all wrapped around the singular notion that the reality humans know is, in fact, an incredibly elaborate simulation run by computers, a sort of video game if you will. In honor of the movie’s anniversary, Variety

Disney’s “Dumbo” had an underwhelming liftoff at the domestic box office. Tim Burton’s live-action remake of the 1941 cartoon debuted with $45 million from 4,259 North American theaters, below expectations heading into the weekend. While that was easily enough to top the domestic box office, it marks the lowest start among the studio’s recent live-action

The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1956, but one way or another it has been the subject of just about every great science-fiction movie, from “Metropolis” to “Frankenstein,” from the paranoid fables of the ’50s (about brainy robots and aliens with giant noggins who were like “advanced” versions of ourselves) to “2001: A Space

Maintaining Chile’s protracted awards honeymoon with international festivals, Jorge Riqeulme’s “Some Beasts,” starring Alfredo Castro and Paulina Garcia, swept Toulouse’s 35th Films in Progress, a pix-in-post competition which also serves as a traditional launch-pad for selection at the Cannes Festival. “Some Beasts” won three of the four prizes on offer: Toulouse Films in Progress Prize;

Beyonce was named Entertainer of the Year, and “Black Panther” nearly swept the film categories at the 50th NAACP Awards on Saturday night. During her speech at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Beyonce graciously thanked her fellow nominees in the category, including NBA superstar LeBron James, “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler and star Chadwick Boseman,

Leaders of the Writers Guild of America have repeated a threat to sue the major Hollywood talent agencies for alleged conflicts of interest. The leaders issued the threat Saturday during a members-only meeting at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif., attended by about 300, according to an attendee. The meeting was the fourth

“Romancing the Stone” looks like a fun adventure romp onscreen, but making the Michael Douglas–Kathleen Turner movie that turns 35 this week was no stroll through the jungle. There were alligators, mud and plenty of back-and-forth with the studio — not to mention a tragedy after it opened. The romantic comedy adventure opened March 30,

When you watch the silent-screen star Louise Brooks in one of the films that made her a legend, most spectacularly the glittering femme-fatale drama “Pandora’s Box” (1929), it’s shocking to see how contemporary she looks. Haircuts that were once cutting edge — punk spikes, a ’50s ducktail, Jane Fonda’s “Klute” shag — look, almost inevitably

March 29, 2019 6:05PM PT Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy are in negotiations to star as women who obtain superpowers in Netflix’s “Thunder Force.” The film will be written and directed by McCarthy’s husband Ben Falcone. “Thunder Force” will be produced by Marc Platt, Falcone and McCarthy. Plot details are under wraps. Spencer was an

In today’s film news roundup, AMC sets free screenings of a Martin Luther King documentary, Participant comes on board “Monos,” and David Glasser’s 101 Studios hires three execs. SCREENINGS AMC Theatres will honor the life of Martin Luther King Jr. with free showings at 100 locations of the documentary “King: A Filmed Record…Montgomery to Memphis.”

March 29, 2019 3:45PM PT Jason Reitman has hired “Captain Marvel” actress Mckenna Grace for his new “Ghostbusters” movie, which centers on a family headed by a single mother. The news came after Variety reported this month that Carrie Coon is in talks to play the mom and Finn Wolfhard is in negotiations to play her son.

March 29, 2019 3:14PM PT Irish actor Cillian Murphy is in talks to join John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place” sequel along with Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe. Krasinski is returning to direct the untitled sequel for Paramount. “A Quiet Place” grossed $340 million at the global box office last year. Since then, the

Rita Wilson delivered a love letter to Hollywood in her speech while accepting her new star on the Walk of Fame. “This street has drawn people from around the world to come walk the boulevard, where these beautiful stars allowed them to dream about what it must be like to live in Hollywood, and who