Movies

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

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),