The Continental Hotel, a safe haven for elite international assassins, is a linchpin to the distinct mythology behind “John Wick.” That operation is held together by hotel manager Charon, played by Lance Reddick. “I never get to play characters like this,” Reddick tells Variety. The actor talks about his against-typecast character, what makes the “John
Movies
What is it that we love about Elton John? If “Rocketman” director Dexter Fletcher ever stopped to ask himself that question, the response was apparently so simple as to be almost vulgar: The sunglasses. And the sequins. And the songs, of course. Elton fans will find more of those three elements than they can count
It was November 17, 1989 when “The Little Mermaid” splashed into theaters. Its arrival loosed a Disney animation tsunami through the 1990s, resulting in a series of beloved films that are now experiencing a lucrative second life with live-action remakes like “Beauty and the Beast” and this month’s “Aladdin.” “Mermaid” started it all, a lush
Sola Media has sold its animated feature “Dreambuilders” to multiple territories, including major countries such as China, South Korea and Germany. The film centers on Minna, whose life is turned upside-down when her dad’s fiancée, Helena, and her daughter, Jenny, move in. One night, Minna enters a dream world where she finds she can manipulate
There are filmmakers who get younger as they grow older — against all odds, they become more spry, clear-eyed, muscular, and relevant. Ken Loach, for a long time, made diligent and austere droopy-dog dramas about what used to be called “the working class,” and those films lived on the quiet end of the radar; a
“Charlatan”Director: Agnieszka HollandProducers: Marlene Film Production, Film & Music Entertainment, MadantsLogline: Inspired by the real-life figure of Jan Mikolášek, Holland’s latest follows an herbalist who devotes his life to care for the sick, despite the challenges.Sales: Films Boutique “The Coldest Game”Director: Lukasz KosmickiProducer: Watchout Studio, K5 Intl.Logline: Bill Pullman stars in this spy thriller, set
A few years ago, when she was still an up-and-coming producer in Warsaw, Klaudia Smieja met skeptics who thought she’d bit off more than she could chew with “Mr. Jones”: an ambitious, 1930s-set drama directed by Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland, with a €10 million ($11.3 million) budget that dwarfed the typical ask for a
James Gray is going back to school for his next feature. “The Lost City of Z” filmmaker will write and direct “Armageddon Time,” a memoir about growing up in Queens, New York, in the mid-1980s. In a twist, Fred Trump, the Queens-based real estate developer who sired Donald Trump, and the current president will appear
May 16, 2019 11:01AM PT IFC Films will launch a new subscription video on demand channel, Variety has learned. Dubbed IFC Films Unlimited, it will comprise theatrically released and award-winning titles such as “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “The Trip,” “45 Years” and “The Babadook.” The movies will be furnished from the company’s distribution labels IFC
The capricious ocean is a recurrent, mesmerizing image in Mati Diop’s feature debut “Atlantics,” but given its perfidious connotations for the people of Senegal, who’ve lost so many souls to its depths, the director ensures the rolling waves remain hypnotic rather than beautiful. It’s the right decision for this romantic and melancholy film, more apt
May 16, 2019 10:00AM PT Susan Sarandon is to star in John Krokidas’ debut feature “Tunnels,” which Highland Film Group is selling in Cannes. The film is set in the wake of a school shooting, when an unlikely friendship develops between Ruby Love (Sarandon), the grandmother who raised the shooter, and Grayson Mitchell, the teenage
Where does the path to diversity begin? What kickstarts fearlessness and the will to win, to create, to innovate? How do aspiring entertainment artists and executives develop the skills to tell tomorrow’s stories and find the tools to build the next generation of platforms to sustain an industry where disruption is the new normal? Without
May 16, 2019 9:56AM PT Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Nadav Lapid’s feature drama “Synonyms,” which had its world premiere at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year and won the top prize Golden Bear for best film. “Synonyms,” co-produced by director Maren Ade (“Toni Erdmann”) amongst others, is loosely
Despite Tim Blake Nelson’s knack for playing folksy characters in films such as “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” in his soul lurks the heart of a classicist. Nelson, who stars in HBO’s “Watchmen” series this fall, has also penned the play “Socrates,” now running at New York’s Public Theater through June 2. Doug Hughes directs,
SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris will seek re-election as the union’s top national officer and the head of the ticket for the Unite for Strength and United Screen Actors Nationwide factions. Carteris made the announcement on Thursday, two weeks after actor Matthew Modine said he was running as the lead candidate for Membership First, the self-styled
Jazz artist and film composer Terence Blanchard was presented with the BMI Icon award at Wednesday night’s Film, TV and Visual Media Awards of performing-rights society Broadcast Music Inc. in Beverly Hills. Blanchard, composer for many of Spike Lee’s films (including “Malcolm X,” “Inside Man” and the recently Oscar-nominated “BlacKkKlansman”), was honored for his “unique
May 16, 2019 9:02AM PT Two female directors co-sign this involving adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s elegant literary fiction about life under Taliban control in the Afghan capital. The long-awaited, graphically rich, 2D watercolor-style animation “The Swallows Of Kabul” from French helmers Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec provides an involving adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s elegant literary
May 16, 2019 5:32AM PT There are few fireworks in Franco Lolli’s lived-in study of a single mother in personal and professional turmoil, but it delivers slower-burning rewards. Colombian writer-director Franco Lolli wrongfoots us a little with the title of his sophomore feature “Litigante”: Unsuspecting audiences may go in expecting a courtroom drama, not least
Movie technology company Motion is launching Thursday in Cannes that seeks to connect movie producers and sales agents directly with their audience through a cutting-edge digital distribution model. Motion, which brings together executives from Cinemarket, White Rabbit and LeapDAO, is in Cannes to demonstrate to industry players how it can combine an Ethereum blockchain-enabled method
Since its launch in May 2016, the São Paulo Film Commission (Spcine) has assisted on over 2,700 productions: Features, shorts, TV and TV commercials. Those numbers put the metropolis alongside Mexico City as one of Latin America’s most utilized shooting destinations. It currently hosts more than 1,000 productions per year. In industry terms the city
Steven Paul’s SP Media Group is acquiring a majority stake in the Atlas Comics library and has signed a first-look deal with Paramount Pictures to develop, finance, produce and distribute superhero and other films based on the comic books. SP Media has also signed up screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (“Batman Forever”) and his Weed Road Pictures
May 16, 2019 1:00AM PT Noomi Rapace will star as Mossad’s most famous female agent in “Sylvia,” an action movie from Vicky Jewson, who developed the project with WestEnd Films under the company’s female-skewed WeLove banner. London-based WestEnd will handle sales and will be talking to buyers at Cannes. The project reunites “The Girl With
Kantemir Balagov comes from Kabardino-Balkaria, a region in the Russian Caucasus that is very poor and has a high level of youth unemployment. Balagov studied under Russian director Alexander Sokurov for three years, and made his debut feature with “Closeness,” which was in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2017, and won the Fipresci prize. “Beanpole,”
Famke Janssen has joined Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the cast of crime thriller “The Postcard Killings.” Variety has been given the first-look image from the movie. Morgan plays Jacob Kanon, the New York detective intent on capturing his daughter’s murderer. Janssen (“X-Men,” “Taken”) plays Valerie Kanon, the mother of their now deceased daughter. Across Europe,
CANNES — Produced by Cottonwood Media and Studiocanal, written by “Ice Age 2’s” Gerry Swallow, and directed by Academy Award nominated Samuel Tourneux (“Only Pidgeons Go To Heaven”), $25 million animated feature “Around the World” had sparked offers from “from all over the world” by Wednesday evening at Cannes, said Anne Cherel, Studiocanal head of
CANNES — “The Swallows of Kabul” marks a new step forward for co-directors Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec. A leading figure of French film and theatre, Breitman had never worked in animation before, so she teamed with up-and-coming talent Gobbé-Mévellec to bring this bittersweet tale of Taliban oppression and artistic resistance to life. Following its
May 15, 2019 9:00PM PT French distributor Eurozoom has acquired local rights for “To The Ends Of The Earth,” the new film by Japanese directing icon Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Following a deal struck on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, international sales duties were picked up by Japanese indie sales firm Free Stone Productions. Starring Atsuko
May 15, 2019 6:01PM PT Quebecois actor Monia Chokri makes an overlong but buoyant debut about a directionless woman’s unhealthy emotional reliance on her brother. Despite all her evident idiosyncrasies, there’s something familiar about Sophia (Anne Élisabeth Bossé), the focus of Quebecois debutante Monia Chokri’s comedy “A Brother’s Love,” which gets the Un Certain Regard
May 15, 2019 5:59PM PT Director Dante Lam and star Eddie Peng celebrated the completion of shooting on “The Rescue” with an underwater dive in Mexico and a couple of bottles of sparkling wine. Made without prominent guns or martial arts, the film is an upbeat and intense action film that features China’s Coast Guard
In today’s film news roundup, Kristen Stewart’s “Happiest Season” gets backed, Sarah Hyland’s “The Wedding Season” is sold, “Apollo 11 – The Immersive Live Show” has a new cast and “Sleeping in Plastic” goes up for sale. ROM-COM BACKING Entertainment One will co-finance TriStar’s holiday-themed romantic comedy “Happiest Season,” starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis.