Movies

January 29, 2019 1:16AM PT Cinema box office in Japan dropped by 3% last year to $2.04 billion. But 2018 was still the third-highest year on record. According to data published by the Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan (Eiren), Japanese-produced films earned $1.12 billion, down 2.8% from 2017. They still grabbed a majority of

Warden Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) has executed 12 death row inmates, and each one seems to get harder. During the lethal injection that opens writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s “Clemency,” the paramedic can’t find a vein, the widow-to-be is sobbing through her prayers, the anti-capital punishment protestors are chanting outside, and when the stent fails and the

January 28, 2019 11:40PM PT A family attempts to make a meager living operating a private ambulance in Mexico City in Luke Lorentzen’s gripping doc. If you think the health care system is flawed in America, “Midnight Family” provides a stark snapshot of how truly broken things are in Mexico City, where fewer than 45

January 28, 2019 7:14PM PT Ava DuVernay’s content distribution shop Array has acquired the documentary “Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen” out of the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by her youngest son and archivist Hepi Mita, the film is a deeply intimate portrait of the New Zealand filmmaker — who became the first indigenous woman

A few months before the film version of “The Sound of Music” hit the silver screen, a song plugger working the catalog of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein approached label owner Dave Kapp with a plan to turn one of the songs from the score into a hit single, thinking it would boost the box

There’s a long-standing Hollywood tradition of comic characters (the vast majority, but not all, played by stars of “Saturday Night Live”) who are patently disreputable anti-social f—ups. It’s the comedy as rock ‘n’ roll school of bad behavior, and its exemplars are legend: John Belushi turning wreckage into blissed-out anarchy in “National Lampoon’s Animal House,”

Last year, a piece in the Washington Post raised the question, “Is Jules Feiffer Our Greatest Living Cartoonist?” To which Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus” creator Art Spiegelman replied, “He’s certainly near the very pinnacle, wherever that is.” All of which sounds rather complimentary if it weren’t a somewhat inadequate description of the 89-year-old social satirist extraordinaire’s

In today’s film news roundup, “The Wizard of Oz” sets a record among classic films, the “Grudge” reboot moves to 2020, CAA signs horror specialist William McGregor and the DGA unveils its awards show presenters. RECORD Fathom Events’ 80th anniversary of “The Wizard of Oz” took in $1.2 million at 408 North American sites on

There have been some mighty big deals at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, but there may be no entry there this year that seems more of a slam-dunk for a major breakout than “Brittany Runs a Marathon.” This terrifically engaging debut feature by playwright Paul Downs Colaizzano is the best kind of “crowdpleaser”: one that

Indie films can still succeed in theaters, but producers and directors must be more creative in selling their films and cooking up stories that will resonate with audiences. That’s the takeaway from a panel on theatrical distribution that was held at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a gathering that brought together producers, agents, and distributors.

January 28, 2019 4:00PM PT Tech monolith Apple made its first purchase at the 2019 Sundance film festival, in the coming-of-age drama “Hala.” The film, from writer-director Minhal Baig and executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith, sold for an undisclosed amount. Baig’s project centers on seventeen-year old Hala, navigating the conflicting worlds of her traditional Muslim

January 28, 2019 3:37PM PT Angelina Jolie has come on board to star in the chase thriller “Those Who Wish Me Dead” with Taylor Sheridan directing from his own script. Bron Studios and Film Rites are producing and Creative Wealth Media is financing. Sheridan is adapting the script from Michael Koryta’s 2014 novel of the

January 28, 2019 3:36PM PT A suave Brad Pitt sprawls across a bright yellow golf cart in one of the several images released last week on Vanity Fair from Quentin Tarantino’s latest film project “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Written and directed by Tarantino, backed by Sony’s Columbia Pictures and produced by David Heyman’s

Sony Pictures Classics has bought the North American rights to the documentary “David Crosby: Remember My Name” in a deal in the low seven figures. The film, which premiered on Jan. 26 at the Sundance Film Festival, is produced by Cameron Crowe and directed by A.J. Eaton in his feature directing debut. It includes interviews

Representation for LGBTQ actors of color has been given a bigger platform in recent years, thanks to the success of shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Pose,” and films like the Oscar-winning “Moonlight.” But as the nuances surrounding diversity continue to expand and evolve, these “double minority” actors still often find themselves as spectators, in

Pete Davidson is familiar with Sundance, but not for the annual film festival. “I love Park City, Utah, because the last time I was here, I was in rehab,” Davidson told Variety about checking into the Cirque Lodge treatment center about four years ago. “It’s nice to be on the other side of it. And,

January 28, 2019 2:11PM PT More than 50 high-profile Hollywood producers — including Reese Witherspoon, J.J. Abrams, and Jordan Peele — have committed to hiring at least one female director in the next 18 months. The initiative is part of the Timesupx2 campaign to double the number of women in leadership positions. The effort was

January 28, 2019 1:54PM PT Semi-estranged siblings reunite over their father’s deathbed in ‘Gook’ director Justin Chon’s stylish character drama. A sharp detour from the deliberately raw feel of his well-received prior “Gook,” which won the NEXT audience award at Sundance two years ago, Justin Chon’s “Ms. Purple” is a character study-cum-mood piece of dolorous

January 28, 2019 12:53PM PT Disney has set a one-week engagement for “Black Panther” to return to theaters to celebrate Black History Month during Feb. 1-7 at 250 participating AMC locations. Tickets are free for everyone, and there will be two showings per day at each participating theater. Disney will also give a $1.5 million

January 28, 2019 12:20PM PT Zombies chew up a petting zoo in this immature horror-farce, but star Lupita Nyong’o survives with her dignity intact. Australian slacker Dave (Alexander England) excels at only two things: zombie video games and fighting with his girlfriend. Luckily, “Little Monsters‘” kindergarten teacher Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o) and her class of

January 28, 2019 9:36AM PT New Line is in final negotiations on a massive $15 million deal for “Blinded by the Light,” a coming-of-age film set to Bruce Springsteen’s music that debuted to a rapturous standing ovation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. “Blinded by the Light” follows a Pakistani British teenager who dreams of

January 28, 2019 9:00AM PT NBA Star Kyrie Irving will star in and executive produce a currently untitled horror movie with Imagine Entertainment about an Oklahoma hotel that has a reputation of being haunted. Imagine Entertainment has preemptively optioned an upcoming Players’ Tribune article, an oral history of experiences from NBA stars who have stayed at the

Midway through Steven Soderbergh’s “High Flying Bird,” a taut drama set among rookie players and veteran agents in the midst of an NBA lockout, a wise ex-player played by Bill Duke gives us a CliffsNotes version of the entire history of race in professional basketball. Moving from the Harlem Globetrotters to the NBL to the

“The Report,” a politically charged thriller about the CIA’s use of torture, has sold to Amazon Studios following its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Variety has learned. The price is in the $14 million range and the pact is for global rights. The film focuses on Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) and

Two years after China’s Hehe Pictures rescued it from receivership, former Asian industry powerhouse Fortissimo Films is making a full return to the international film sales business. The revived and revamped company will debut next week at Berlin’s European Film Market, and will also launch an international film marketing services subsidiary. In its former incarnation,

MADRID —  Tel Aviv-based Cinephil has acquired international sales rights to “Waiting for the Carnival,” in which Marcelo Gomes, one of Brazil’s foremost fiction feature directors, brings a cinematographer’s eye and a loving son’s heart to a portrait of the rampant capitalism which has swept the town of Toritama, as he plumbs the contradictions and

More than a decade has passed since The Slamdance Guerrilla Game Competition was removed from Utah’s annual independent film festival following an online furor over the entry and consequent removal of the controversial game “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!”.  But the decision to close the Guerrilla showcase “was not based on controversy,” Slamdance President Peter Baxter

January 28, 2019 4:51AM PT Neon has picked up rights to “The Lodge,” a creepy cabin tale about a damaged woman and the children she is caring for after it thrilled audiences at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film follows twos siblings who are snowed in with Grace, the younger woman that their separated

Early in “The Souvenir,” over drinks and and a current of passive-aggressive flirting, two soon-to-be lovers rehash the old life-versus-art debate. One, a filmmaker, is anxiously preoccupied with honoring reality as faithfully as possible. The other, an observer, all but rolls his eyes: “We don’t want to see life played out as it is, we

Variety has been given exclusive access to first-look footage from Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland’s “Mr. Jones,” which world premieres in Official Competition at the Berlin Film Festival. The film stars James Norton, Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard. [embedded content] “Mr. Jones” tells the little-known story of Gareth Jones, an ambitious young Welsh journalist who