April 4, 2019 11:05AM PT Bill Burr has joined Pete Davidson in Judd Apatow’s untitled comedy — a semi-autobiographical story revolving around Davidson’s life. The film is written by Apatow, Davidson, and Dave Sirus. Davidson, who grew up in Staten Island, N.Y., lost his firefighter father in the September 11 attacks. The “Saturday Night Live”
Movies
Dave Bautista finds himself forced to teach spycraft to a 9-year-old girl in the first trailer for STXfilms’ comedy “My Spy.” Bautista plays a tough-as-nails CIA operative who admits, “I’m just not that good with people, but there is one thing I’m good at,” followed by explosions and mayhem. His superior (Ken Jeong) notes that
In a world where a movie like “Green Book” can be raked over the coals for the (alleged) crime of being a quaintly retrograde, patronizing-to-the-point-of-seeming-racist film (for the record, I thought it was none of that), “The Best of Enemies,” another middlebrow inspirational drama about a black person and a white person who start off
“Avengers: Endgame” could assemble one of the biggest domestic opening weekends of all time when it hits theaters on April 26. The latest Marvel adventure is on pace for a debut between $200 million and $250 million, according to early tracking. If estimates hold, it will join its predecessor, “Avengers: Infinity War,” as one of
April 4, 2019 6:00AM PT The Tribeca Film Institute and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have announced the three TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund 2019 grantees, awarding them a total of $150,000. The creators behind “Asia A,” “Bolichicos,” and “Wiring Utopia” have been chosen as the new grant winners. “The 2019 slate of TFI Sloan grantee teams
Confirming indications that emerged at CinemaCon, Saudi Arabia says it will invest $35 billion by 2020 in building multiplexes and aims to have more than 2,500 movie screens up and running over the next five years. The figures were trumpeted in an announcement Thursday by Saudi Arabia’s General Commission for Audiovisual Media, which said that
MADRID — After years of marked box-office growth, Central American box office dipped 5.6% in 2018, from $144.34 million in 2017, to $136.3 million last year – which is nonetheless almost 50% higher than the regional box office recorded in 2012, according to comScore figures. Honduras bucked the trend, with 8.5% growth, whereas the biggest
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, star of Netflix’ “Sacred Games” series, is set to star in and co-produce Bangladeshi filmmaker Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s “No Land’s Man.” The predominantly English-language film will chronicle a tragic, strange, and at times funny journey of a South Asian man whose journey takes layered and complicated shape when he meets an Australian girl
MADRID — Netflix CEO Reed Hastings officially inaugurated the U.S. streaming giant’s Madrid Production Hub, its first European production center, on Thursday morning. While the hub’s first three sound stages look impressively efficient, they are designed principally for TV work, not gargantuan movie blockbuster production. So it was Netflix’s plans for Spanish production which rreally
April 4, 2019 3:10AM PT Quentin Dupieux’s “Deerskin,” an offbeat French comedy with Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) and Adèle Haenel (“BPM”), is set to open the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight. “Deerskin,” which marks Dupieux’s seventh feature, stars Dujardin as a man who becomes obsessed with owning a pricey designer deerskin jacket, leading him to
Despite some censorship of its gay content, “Bohemian Rhapsody” has broken the box office record in China for a film imported by the country’s small but growing National Alliance of Arthouse Cinemas. As of April 1, after just 10 days in theaters, the film has taken in RMB80.3 million ($11.1 million) in limited release. The
Over the years, I’ve consumed my share of movies — documentaries, dramatizations, deconstructive punk curios — that play off the Manson murders. The quality of this genre (and by now it is a genre) is hit-or-miss, yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Manson film that wasn’t on some level trying for something, for
April 3, 2019 10:36PM PT A Queens court pioneers a compassionate method of handling prostitution cases in Stephanie Wang-Breal’s inspiring documentary. Compassion isn’t a term usually associated with the criminal justice system, but that’s exactly what’s meted out to individuals appearing on prostitution charges in Queens Human Trafficking Intervention Court (QHTIC). Director Stephanie Wang-Breal’s “Blowin’
April 3, 2019 9:32PM PT South Korea’s second biggest film festival, the Jeonju International Film Festival, will open its 20th edition with Italian director Claudio Giovannesi’s crime drama “Piranhas.” It will close with “Skin,” an American biographical drama written and directed by Guy Nattiv. Festival organizers announced their film selection at a live-streamed press conference
April 3, 2019 9:00PM PT After 15 years of leading the Zurich Film Festival, co-founders Nadja Schildknecht and Karl Spoerri will step down from their posts in 2020, with veteran film journalist Christian Jungen set to take over Spoerri’s role as artistic director. “It is our wish that in the long term we can transfer
Amazon has filed a limited rebuttal to a lawsuit from Woody Allen, who has accused the streaming service of dropping him due to the #MeToo movement. Amazon’s lawyers argue that Allen has become a “pariah” in the film industry. But the motion to dismiss, filed Tuesday in federal court in New York, seeks to throw
There’s a new toy in the bin at Bonnie’s place. Disney wrapped up its presentation at CinemaCon, the annual exhibition trade show currently underway in Las Vegas, by giving the crowd of theater owners an exclusive look at the first 17 minutes of “Toy Story 4.” The new footage shows Woody and crew adjusting to
Perhaps newly-minted Disney employee and Fox Film vice chairman Emma Watts said it best herself: movies like the studio’s “Ford v. Ferrari” are “an endangered species.” Lucky, then, that Disney inherited the film earlier this month when it acquired 21st Century Fox, and Watts along with it to continue in her role as production president
In today’s film news roundup, Sam Worthington gets cast in “Dreamland,” Jacob Tremblay’s “Burn Your Maps” gets distribution and Lynn Shelton’s “Sword of Trust” will open the Seattle Film Festival. CASTINGS Sam Worthington, Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and “Game of Thrones” star Indira Varma are joining Nicholas Jarecki‘s opioid crisis thriller “Dreamland.” Previously announced cast
Hakuna Matata, indeed. Disney debuted all-new footage of the highly anticipated remake at CinemaCon, the annual exhibition trade show in Las Vegas. The roughly five minute clip followed a young Simba (JD McCrary) and his father Mufasa (James Earl Jones, returning in all his baritoned glory) as they survey their kingdom in the Pride Lands.
Leaders of Hollywood agents and writers have conducted what’s become a deeply disappointing set of negotiations — fueling the town’s growing uncertainty over the outcome. As of late Wednesday afternoon, neither the Writers Guild of America not the Association of Talent Agents would disclose when — or if — they will meet again. The two
There’s no easy way to digest the hard facts at the heart of director Kenny Roy’s “Chance.” From the very first moments, this animated feature about a peaceable pit bull born into dogfighting tells the audience that it will be difficult to avert their eyes from this horror any longer. While the film’s animal activism
Walt Disney Studios dazzled theater owners worried about the aftershocks of its $71.3 billion purchase of much of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets by making a case that the two studios’ combined firepower will keep audiences flocking to cinemas. In a sizzle reel, the studio showed clips from some of the biggest hits
An annual convention of movie theater owners got a jolt of adrenaline on Wednesday morning, as Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham touched down in Las Vegas to greet CinemaCon 2019. Surprise guests at the morning Universal Pictures presentation, the men brought an action-packed first trailer for “Hobbs & Shaw,” a spinoff from the “Fast and
The domestic box office may be off to a sluggish start this year, but two genres have proven to be consistent winners: superheroes and horror. If that trend continues, movie theaters in North America might get a much-needed boost this weekend as Warner Bros.’ comic-book adventure “Shazam!” and Paramount Pictures’ remake of “Pet Sematary” open
Jennifer Hudson delivered an anthemic rendition of “Memory” to cap Universal Pictures’ CinemaCon presentation on Wednesday. Universal and Working Title didn’t release any footage from “Cats,” the studio’s big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, because studio chief Donna Langley said the film’s effects are so complicated that they have nothing to show the audience
Agnieszka Holland, the director of Oscar nominated films “Europa Europa” and “In Darkness,” has begun shooting her latest pic, “Charlatan.” Films Boutique is handling foreign sales. The Polish director, whose last film “Mr. Jones” premiered in competition at Berlin Film Festival in February, started to lens the pic Monday in Mladá Boleslav prison in the
April 3, 2019 11:52AM PT The big-screen version of “Downton Abbey” will center on a royal visit. In a new trailer that debuted at CinemaCon, the Crawley family and their army of maids, butlers, cooks, and assorted domestics are thrown into disarray by the impending arrival of King George V and Queen Mary. The year
April 3, 2019 11:13AM PT Mel Gibson has settled a legal battle with Voltage Pictures over “The Professor and the Madman,” a film that tells the gothic backstory of the Oxford English Dictionary. Gibson sued the production company in 2017, alleging that it had reneged on a deal to give him approval of the final
April 3, 2019 10:45AM PT Fresh off her Oscar nomination for “The Favourite,” Rachel Weisz has set her sights on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as she is in early talks join Scarlett Johansson in Marvel’s “Black Widow” standalone movie. Though a deal has not yet been completed, sources tell Variety that talks are headed in that