Movies

Steve Mosko is on a mission to build the indie TV studio for the streaming era in his new role as CEO of Village Roadshow Entertainment Group. Mosko, the former Sony Pictures Television chief, details for this week’s episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast his mission to build out Village Roadshow into a production entity

March 12, 2019 10:06AM PT The Dark Knight is rising again. Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy will screen in Imax in five cities as part of Warner Bros. Pictures’ 80th anniversary celebration of the first-ever appearance of Batman in the comics. The screenings will start on March 30 with showings of 2005’s “Batman Begins,” 2008’s

March 12, 2019 9:00AM PT “Sully” writer Todd Komarnicki has been tapped to write the international action thriller “Snow Dragon,” reuniting him with “Sully” producer Allyn Stewart. Development is being financed through a joint partnership between Xinhua Pictures, Shune River and producers Stewart and John Benitz. For Xinhua Pictures, Zhang Xiao Hong will produce. Gao

March 12, 2019 8:48AM PT In another blow to MoviePass, the subscription service’s parent company has been forced to revise its financial disclosures and to acknowledge that its losses were more significant than it initially reported. Helios & Matheson, the service’s owner, said it had net losses of $146.7 million over the quarter ending in

Skip Paul served as a senior executive at MCA under Sid Sheinberg and Lew Wasserman from 1985 to 1995. Paul is currently a senior adviser at Centerview Partners. He pays tribute to Sheinberg, his mentor and dear friend, who died March 7 at age 84. I first met Sid Sheinberg when I was sitting across

China’s film production sector might be facing a financial and governmental squeeze at the moment, but not multi-talented Chinese star Xu Zheng. Xu is guaranteed a payday of some $17.5 million (RMB117 million) on his current project, “Lost in Russia,” which amounts to more than half the film’s gross production budget. “Lost in Russia,” which

A throng of Hollywood elite in a tent on the freezing beach gave a standing ovation when “If Beale Street Could Talk” won the best feature prize at the Independent Spirit Awards in February. Barry Jenkins also took directing honors for the film, an adaptation of James Baldwin’s classic novel that was produced by Annapurna and

After receiving a call at work that her son has suffered a severe playground accident, a cash-strapped single mother in Sante Fe, Argentina, criss-crosses an unsympathetic city in search of the hospital where he’s been taken, all the while trying to keep her own surging asthma attack under control. A trim, taut second feature from

March 12, 2019 6:27AM PT [embedded content] You ain’t never had a friend like Will Smith’s Genie. That is, unless you have a friend who can turn you into a prince. In the first full-length trailer for Disney’s “Aladdin,” Mena Massoud’s street urchin uses one of his three wishes from the Genie’s magical lamp to

“Good Boys” is an easy elevator pitch: “Superbad” for ages 8-12 that maintains the sweet confusion of tweens but liberally uses curse words. Executive producer Seth Rogen must have had minimal pushback at distributor Universal Pictures, as the film has the stuff that classic coming-of-age comedies are made of (even an obligatory “Stand By Me”

Those who find joy in 11-year-olds dropping the F-bomb, and otherwise talking smack they really don’t understand, will be in hysterics for the full hour and a half of “Good Boys.” Anyone looking for a little more in the way of comic inspiration is likely to be disappointed by this mediocre comedy from director Gene

March 11, 2019 6:38PM PT Ethan Hawke plays a newly released ex-con in a slight drama as uncertain of where it wants to go as its hapless protagonist. “First Reformed” last year provided Ethan Hawke with an actor’s dream role in terms of character depth and meaningful conflicts — even if the Academy was practically

United Talent Agency chief executive officer Jeremy Zimmer has pleaded with clients to ignore the Writers Guild of America’s plan for writers to fire their agents next month. Zimmer sent the lengthy email Monday, the day before the WGA and the Association of Talent Agents resume negotiations on revamping the rules of engagement for agents

March 11, 2019 6:20PM PT Since 2008’s “Iron Man,” the Marvel cinematic universe has continued expanding, now numbering more than 20 films. Along the way, the company has developed a reputation for solid technology choices with the large-format ARRI Alexa 65 camera and the Codex Vault 65 on-set media management system as cornerstones of its

Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films has optioned the movie rights to Dinitia Smith’s historical drama “The Honeymoon: A Novel of George Eliot.” Smith’s novel, published in 2016, recounts Eliot’s honeymoon in Venice in June, 1880, following her marriage to John Walter Cross, a man 20 years younger. Eliot, who was 60 at the time, was recovering

“Mickey and the Bear” reps an assured feature debut for Annabelle Attanasio, who wrote and directed this straightforward but skillfully nuanced drama about a troubled father-daughter relationship. Camila Morrone plays the titular motherless small-town Montana teen who needs to decide if what she wants from life is more than just being the minder of her

Dennis Quaid’s career is bustin’ out all over. The actor-turned-rocker demonstrated his range Saturday night, taking the stage at Los Angeles music club the Mint with his band The Sharks. The group delivered a raucous set that had the audience of more than 200 on its feet as Quaid danced through the crowd, belted like

In today’s film news roundup, Alex Woolf and Imogen Poots are cast in a crime drama, Laura Dern gets a film festival honor and doggie movie “Buddy” gets distribution. CASTING Alex Wolff and Imogen Poots are set to star in writer/director Joey Klein’s upcoming crime drama “Castle in the Ground.” Wolff is portraying a teenager

Disney’s “Captain Marvel” finally settled the score on one of Hollywood’s biggest misconceptions: Female superheroes can hold their own at the box office. That’s the big takeaway from the opening weekend of “Captain Marvel,” the studio’s first comic-book movie to put the spotlight on a female heroine. “Captain Marvel” — starring Brie Larson — debuted

March 11, 2019 11:30AM PT Alison Brie, Dan Stevens, Sheila Vand, and Jeremy Allen White will star in the horror movie “The Rental,” Dave Franco’s directorial debut. Franco wrote the script with Joe Swanberg. The story centers on two couples who rent a vacation home for a celebratory weekend. “The Rental” will be fully financed

Saturday afternoon brought rising Latinx filmmakers and actors together at Variety’s 10 Latinxs to Watch brunch held in partnership with the 36th annual Miami Film Festival. The festive celebration, which took place at the JW Marquis Marriott’s Boulud Sud restaurant, featured a panel discussion moderated by Variety’s Malina Saval with the following five select individuals

Bugs, Daffy, Porky and the lot are headed to the French-Swiss border where they will open the 2019 Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival, in what the festival has announced as the world premiere of new episodes of the rebooted franchise titled “Looney Tunes Cartoons.” They will screen ahead of the previously announced opening film “Playmobil:

“The Ballad of Yaya,” “Where is Anne Frank?” and “Musketeers of the Tsar” proved the most-attended of industry presentations among 66 feature projects pitched at this year Cartoon Movie, Europe’s top animated feature co-production forum which ran at the French port city of Bordeaux over March 5-7. A production of Blue Spirit Productions, the company

Steeped in the smell of tacos and burning sugar cane, the sights and sounds of Pahokee, Florida, are portrayed with humid specificity in Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s documentary — yet its story will be entirely familiar to anyone who is, or was, a small-town teenager yearning for a bigger pond. Taking the form of

March 11, 2019 10:43AM PT John Friedberg has been tapped as president of STX’s international division for films, the company announced Monday. His promotion comes after David Kosse, the executive who STX tapped in 2016 to oversee its oversea efforts, was poached by Netflix. Friedberg previously served as the company’s president of international sales since

March 11, 2019 10:09AM PT Nordic TV player NENT has inked new deals with MGM and NBCUniversal that guarantee it a raft of their content for its Viasat and Viaplay services. The MGM deal covers the James Bond catalogue as well as the upcoming “Bond 25,” and also gives NENT local rights to the studio’s

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — She’s only been on the job for two months and a half but new Mexican Film Institute (Imcine) head Maria Novaro feels she’s been on the job for much longer. She has hit the ground running, spurred on by Mexico’s new left-wing president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) who told his team

Amber Tamblyn, the star of “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” films and “Joan of Arcadia,” has moved away from acting in recent years and toward activism. She was deeply involved in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and was one of the founders of Time’s Up, a non-profit organization that was formed in 2018 to combat

March 11, 2019 7:45AM PT With just 18 days to go before the U.K. is set to exit the European Union, Sky has acquired “NYET – A Brexit U.K. Border Farce.” The timely short film hails from Alex Helfrecht and Jorg Tittel’s shingle Oiffy (“The White King”) and will be available to millions of Sky

Over a single opening weekend, composer Pinar Toprak smashed all previous box-office records for women composers in film. She scored “Captain Marvel,” which made $153 million domestically. Until now, the top-grossing films by women composers were Rachel Portman’s “The Vow,” which made $125 million domestic in 2012, and Deborah Lurie’s “Dear John,” $80 million back