Movies

January 22, 2019 12:52PM PT Elton John is willing to bet that Mark Ronson will win the Oscar for Best Original Song for “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born.” The nominations were announced this morning. The legendary performer spoke to Ronson on the latest episode of his radio show “Elton John’s Rocket Hour” on Apple Music’s

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” Shakespeare wrote of Britain’s care-burdened monarchs. Try telling that to the Academy. Once again, playing British royalty has proved to be a tried-and-true route to Oscar glory, with Olivia Colman as the latest actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for portraying an occupant of the British

This year’s Academy Award nominees proved the Oscars don’t need a popular film category to recognize movies with huge box office grosses. The 2019 crop of best picture hopefuls have generated an impressive $1.26 billion so far in North America alone. That bounty is led by “Black Panther,” which earned a sensational $700 million at

The 2019 Oscar nominations have been announced, and if you want to catch up on the nominees, we’ve rounded up some easy ways to watch or stream the original films, documentaries, and songs competing for an award. Period comedy “The Favourite” and Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” lead the pack with 10 nominations apiece, while “Green Book”

Tuesday’s Oscar music nominations produced some of the day’s biggest surprises (yes to Gillian Welch, no to Justin Hurwitz), inevitabilities (Diane Warren is in, like clockwork) and near-inevitabilities that still produced a sigh of relief (Terence Blanchard, un-snubbed at last). Some notes on the shocks and happy affirmations in the Best Original Song and Score

Alfonso Cuaron might’ve tied an Oscar record with four nods to his name for “Roma,” which scored 10 nominations overall. But another black-and-white film in a foreign language, Pawel Pawlikowski’s jazz-infused romantic drama “Cold War,” was honored with three Academy Award nominations Tuesday, the most in history for a primarily Polish-backed production. The film will

January 22, 2019 8:26AM PT Cinema attendance in the U.K. topped 177 million in 2018, the highest number since 1970. Box office held firm at £1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) through the year as 10 movies crossed the £30 million threshold in the year. That compares with six films in 2017. After a sweltering summer in

January 22, 2019 8:19AM PT The 91st Oscar nominations were unveiled on Tuesday with “Roma” and “The Favourite” leading the way with 10 nods each. “Roma,” Alfonso Cuaron’s love-letter to his childhood nanny, is Netflix’s first-ever best picture nomination and could make history as the first foreign-language movie to ever win the top prize at

Songs from “A Star Is Born,” “Black Panther,” “RBG,” “Mary Poppins Returns” and “The Ballad of Lester Scruggs” were nominated for Best Song for the 2019 Academy Awards, announced Tuesday morning, while “BlacKkKlansman,” “Black Panther,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Isle of Dogs” and “Mary Poppins Returns” received nods for Best Score. Specifically, the Best

With individual Oscar nominations as producer, director, writer, and cinematographer of “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón has tied an Academy Awards record shared by Warren Beatty, Alan Menken, and Joel and Ethan Coen. Four individual nominations for a single film remains a milestone in Oscar history. Beatty previously pulled it off on two separate occasions, for “Heaven

It was an anticipated takeaway from this year’s Oscar nominations announcement, but that doesn’t make it any less unfortunate: Despite a number of worthy contenders to choose from, female filmmakers were shut out of the directing category. From Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here” (an Amazon release that received a Cannes screenplay prize) to

“Roma,” a black-and-white, Spanish language coming-of-age drama, and “The Favourite,” a comedy about life in the court of an obscure English monarch, dominated nominations for the 91st Academy Awards, picking up a leading 10 nods apiece. The competition for the top honor also includes “Black Panther,” the blockbuster comic book film; “A Star is Born,”

After more than three decades of making films that have collectively established an undeniable cultural legacy, 61-year-old auteur Spike Lee is finally an Academy Award nominee for best picture and director. It’s as noteworthy a headline as Tuesday’s Oscar nominations announcement is bound to produce. In fact, Lee’s original screenplay notice for the 1989 lightning

January 22, 2019 6:02AM PT Netflix is finally in the hunt for Hollywood’s ultimate prize. The streaming company received its first-ever best picture Oscar nomination on Tuesday for Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” a black-and-white exploration of the “Gravity” director’s youth and the life of the nanny who helped raise him in Mexico. The drama received 10 nominations

Tuesday morning, 10 years after Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” forced a significant paradigm shift at the Academy Awards, a superhero movie was finally nominated for best picture: Marvel’s “Black Panther.” And it represents a fairly remarkable culmination. The move from five best picture nominees to 10 (later altered to a system that can produce

“Roma” and “The Favourite” led nominations for the 91st Oscars, scoring 10 nods each. Both films were nominated for best picture, alongside “Black Panther,” “BlacKkKlansman,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “A Star Is Born,” “Vice,” and “Green Book.” Glenn Close picked up her seventh Academy Award nod for best actress in “The Wife,” while Lady Gaga nabbed her

January 22, 2019 4:54AM PT Studiocanal is resuming its search for a U.K. managing director after Elizabeth Trotman was forced to pull out from the role owing to visa issues, Variety has confirmed. Trotman was named U.K. MD last October, filling the position vacated by Danny Perkins, who is setting up his own business. Trotman

Scandi brands Zentropa, REinvent and TrustNordisk are launching NutAlone, a new streamer of European films and TV dramas. Rikke Ennis, CEO of Copenhagen-based packaging, sales and financing company REInvent Studios, has spent the last couple of years conceptualizing NutAlone with her former TrustNordisk colleagues and Zentropa CEO Anders Kjærhauge. Their idea was to dust off

January 21, 2019 8:38PM PT Marvel Studios’ hotly-anticipated Brie Larson-starring blockbuster “Captain Marvel” will hit Chinese theaters on the same day as it debuts in North America. The female-led picture will release on March 8, 2019, International Women’s Day. Written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the film tells the story of Carol Danvers, a

January 21, 2019 6:23PM PT Gross theatrical box office in Australia grew by 3.6% in 2018, to $890 million (A$1.25 billion). The score was propelled by a rebound in the performance of the top local films. Data from the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia published Tuesday showed aggregate cinema revenues recovering after a dip

Megan Mullally is funny. The “Will & Grace” star can also sing and dance. While she’s not picking up the Oscar hosting gig after the Kevin Hart fiasco, Mullally will take center stage on Sunday, Jan. 27 when she makes her debut as the host of the 25th annual SAG Awards. Variety caught up with

With his fifth No. 1 box office opening, M. Night Shyamalan has plenty to celebrate. “Glass,” the conclusion to a trilogy that consists of the 2000 cult hit “Unbreakable” and 2016’s box office sensation “Split,” topped the box office last weekend — though its win comes with a few caveats. James McAvoy reprised his role

January 21, 2019 9:04AM PT [embedded content] Patra Spanou has picked up world sales rights to “Los miembros de la familia” (Family Members), which will world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama section. Variety has been given an exclusive first look of the film’s trailer. The film is the second feature from writer/director Mateo

Great Point Media and The Development Partnership, the development and production arm of Robert Taylor’s talent agency the Artists Partnership, are joining forces to develop, package, and co-produce multiple films, kicking off with three projects, including “Chasing Agent Freegard,” starring James Norton (“War & Peace”). “Chasing Agent Freegard,” which is being produced by “Captain Phillips”

Sandro Fiorin’s Miami-based FiGa Films, a leading sales agent on the independent Latin American scene, has announced the acquisition of Brazilian doc “Landless,” and released a trailer for the Costa Rican-Spanish drama “El despertar de las hormigas.” Both features will play at this year’s Berlinale Forum and come from young Latin American filmmakers making their

Ryan Reynolds canceled surgery on his arm to fly to China and charm “Deadpool” fans in Beijing on Sunday ahead of the franchise’s unexpected China theatrical debut. Just last week, Fox suddenly announced that a re-cut, PG-13 “Deadpool 2” would hit Chinese theaters starting this Friday – the first time the notoriously blood-splattered and foul-mouthed

Writer-director Hari Sama’s fifth feature, “This is Not Berlin,” is set to world premiere at this month’s Sundance Film Festival. New York-based Cinema Tropical, a leading presenter of Latin American cinema in the U.S., has granted Variety exclusive access to the first trailer for the coming-of-age drama set in 1986 Mexico City. Sama wrote, directed

Qatari powerhouse beIN Media Group is calling on Hollywood to join in fighting a pirate broadcaster that it alleges has stolen billions of dollars’ worth of rights to sports events, films and TV content, and that it says has the backing of Saudi Arabia. Doha-based beIN has compiled what it calls a “dossier of evidence”

Flanked by UniFrance president Serge Toubiana and the National Orchestra of France, filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier stood before a rapt crowd at Paris’ Maison de la Radio this past Saturday to introduce an evening dedicated to French film scores called “May the Music Begin!” That moniker – a reference to the original French title of his

Paris-based Orange Studio has nearly sold out its two French comedy highlights, Philippe de Chauveron’s “Serial (Bad) Weddings 2” and Philippe Lacheau’s “City Hunter.” “Serial (Bad) Weddings 2,” which opened the UniFrance Rendez-Vous in Paris last week, is the sequel of the smash hit film which grossed over $148 million worldwide. The movie has been