Movies

October 25, 2018 11:07AM PT “Suspiria” and “Bad Times at El Royale” star Dakota Johnson has signed with Lighthouse Management + Media. The in-demand actress, who is still repped by WME, had several management companies pitching to her before finally signing with Lighthouse. Johnson has had a busy month, with the Fox thriller “Bad Times

October 25, 2018 7:07AM PT Summer blockbusters such as “The Meg” and “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” helped Imax beat third quarter earnings expectations. The giant screen exhibitor reported earnings of $5.02 million and revenue of $82.1 million. The compared favorably to a loss of $850,000 in the year-ago period, but was down slightly from the

The death of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi left its mark on attendees at the “A Private War” premiere, especially star Rosamund Pike, who portrays a reporter in the film. “This is the price people pay for delivering truth,” Pike told Variety at Wednesday’s premiere held in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. “It’s appalling what happened to Jamal.

Oscar-winning directors Martin Scorsese and Guillermo Del Toro are set to participate in masterclasses at the 17th edition of the Marrakech Film Festival. It will mark Scorsese’s fifth time attending Marrakech Film Festival. He presided over the festival’s jury in 2013. “I’m so happy to be on my way back to Morocco, a country I

Strong gains from content licensing and retransmission consent revenue gave a big boost to NBCUniversal’s contribution to Comcast’s third quarter earnings. Revenue at NBCUniversal climbed 8% for the quarter to $8.6 billion while earnings perked up 8.5% to $2.1 billion. Overall, Comcast beat analysts expectations with total revenue for the quarter of $22.1 billion, up

The Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image’s annual film festival turns 20 at a time when the Indian film industry finds itself in the middle of the #MeToo movement. The festival is one of the few where the core leadership is composed entirely of women. Producer Kiran Rao (“Secret Superstar”) is the festival chairperson, while

With the start of his second edition as Tokyo International Film Festival director, Takeo Hisamatsu feels more confident of TIFF’s direction than when he assumed the post in March of last year. “The first thing I did when I took office was to clarify TIFF’s vision and organize programs and events based on that vision,”

Though its opening film is high-profile Hollywood romance “A Star is Born,” the Tokyo International Film Festival is increasingly focusing its efforts on building bridges with Asia. Especially Japan’s near neighbor, China. The 31st edition of the Tokyo festival got under way Thursday evening with a ceremony at the X Theater in the fashionable Roppongi

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister in “Game of Thrones,” heads a distinguished European cast in “Suicide Tourist,” a mystery drama with romantic elements from Copenhagen-based Snowglobe, whose production credits include “Thelma,” “The Untamed” and “Birds of a Passage.” Described by Snowglobe in a statement as its most ambitious film to date, “Suicide Tourist” marks

Long low on the priority list for Japan’s notoriously insular film industry, co-productions between the second-largest film market in Asia and its overseas partners are now in the spotlight. That was the view of a industry executives, speaking at a seminar at  TIFFCOM, on the margins of the Tokyo International Film Festival. A bilateral film

October 24, 2018 10:30PM PT Shinichiro Ueda, director of the indie hit film “One Cut of the Dead,” lifted the lid on his next project. It is an untitled comedy. Last month Ueda revealed that he was making his next film with Shochiku Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Japanese film studio Shochiku. Speaking Tuesday at the

Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group has cut roughly 15 jobs in New York and Los Angeles, several insiders familiar with the company told Variety. The reduction comes with a consolidation of the marketing and public relations teams under Blair Rich, president of worldwide theatrical and home entertainment marketing. The cuts were not related to or

In today’s film news roundup, “Walking on Water” gets North American distribution, Abramorama acquires rights to “Family in Transition,” and the Cinema Italian Style film festival sets its opening night film.  ACQUISITIONS  Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to “Walking on Water,” centered on installation artist Christo and his 2016 art piece “The Floating

October 24, 2018 4:36PM PT James Karen, character actor with hundreds of roles who was best known for “Poltergeist” and “Night of the Living Dead,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles, his friend Leonard Maltin confirmed. He was 94. Born Jacob Karnovsky in 1923, the actor later changed his last name to Karen after setting out to

October 24, 2018 4:35PM PT With “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” postponed for the foreseeable future, Chris Pratt looks to have found his next film — he is in negotiations to star in Taylor Sheridan’s new writing and directing gig. The film, which David Heyman is producing, follows a former special forces commando (Pratt), who’s

October 24, 2018 4:30PM PT Legendary is producing a live-action feature film version of Shueisha’s Japanese manga franchise “My Hero Academia.” The company, a subsidiary of the China-based Wanda Group, made the announcement Wednesday and noted that the franchise, created by Kohei Horikoshi, has more than 17 million copies in circulation and was the 2017

Richard Linklater will write and direct an untitled film based on the life of comedian Bill Hicks for Focus Features. Hicks was raised as a Southern Baptist and began performing comedy in the late 1970s in Texas. He toured extensively during the 1980s, specializing in dark humor and social commentary. A typical joke: “I never

With scant high profile offerings hitting theaters, Michael Myers won’t need to put up much of a fight to top box office charts again. After “Halloween’s” massive $76 million debut, Universal and Blumhouse’s slasher film starring Jamie Lee Curtis will easily repeat at No. 1 in North America. The question is: how much of a killing

DreamWorks Animation is in final negotiations for the movie rights to Jerry Hawthorne’s board game “Mice and Mystics,” Variety has learned exclusively. Alexandre Aja attached to direct and co-write the script with “Aquaman” scribe David Leslie Johnson. Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Jon Berg are producing. “Mice and Mystics” is a role-playing game in which

MORELIA — There is no doubt that anytime Alfonso Cuarón shows up at a Mexican film festival, it will be one of the highlights of the event. Today’s Masterclass, given at the Morelia Film Festival, was no exception. In the standing-room-only Teatro Ocampo, Cuarón regaled the assemble mix of press, industry professionals from films in

A plus-sized makeup artist with candy-colored hair and a marijuana addiction has a hard time holding down a proper job, so to make ends meet she deals drugs door to door, pedaling her bike to a colorful cast of clients – including her landlady, a soap star, and a nun – across a wide swath

In an ongoing series, Variety profiles 10 emerging Mexican women filmmakers. A year has been a long time for Mexican actress-dramatist-director Lila Avilés. Last October, she was preparing to screen her first feature, “The Chambermaid” (La Camarista) in rough-cut at Los Cabos.“The Chambermaid” won at Los Cabos, attracted co-producers in Bad Boy Billy Production and

The estate of Ana Mendieta has reached a settlement with Amazon Studios over its claims that the film “Suspiria” borrows heavily from the late artist’s work. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The film is set for release this weekend in New York and Los Angeles before going wide the following week. The

CANNES — There’s a scene in “Bayoneta,” Mexican Kyzza Terrazas’ second fiction feature, where Miguel, played by “Club of Crows’” Luis Gerardo Méndez, is asked to sing a song. He does so, Chalino Sanchez’s “Nieves de enero,” a lovely spare ballad about heartbreak. Miguel knows something about that sentiment. An up-and-coming Mexican boxer, a Sydney

Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are officially reteaming. Imperative Entertainment has attached Scorsese to direct and DiCaprio to star in the feature adaptation of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the New York Times best-selling book by David Grann. Imperative acquired the rights to the book in 2016. DiCaprio and Scorsese quickly expressed interest in the

October 24, 2018 11:26AM PT “Hamilton” actor Javier Munoz, David Sullivan, and Marguerite Moreau will star in the independent comedy “Monuments,” which has started shooting, Variety has learned exclusively. David Pasquesi, Joel Murray, and Shunori Ramanathan round out the cast. The movie marks Munoz’s first film role since departing the Broadway production of “Hamilton.” He

October 24, 2018 10:30AM PT Fans of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium franchise won’t be pleased with the way Lisbeth Salander has been reduced to a Batgirl-like figure with a tacked-on psychological profile. It was probably inevitable that Hollywood would neuter the best elements of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” franchise, but did the producers really need to shift

Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón didn’t know why, but the instinct was clear: “Roma,” his most personal film to date, taken from his memories of growing up in Mexico City, had to be shot in black and white. It wasn’t about conjuring nostalgia or referencing the neorealist masters of old, whose work would later be name-checked

October 24, 2018 9:07AM PT The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the 25 animated features submitted for consideration in this year’s Oscar race. Among the entries is Pixar’s box office hit “Incredibles 2,” Wes Anderson’s stop-motion “Isle of Dogs” and Sony’s upcoming “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Also in play are a

With Asia representing a whopping 65% of the earth’s population, it’s small wonder that the continent’s film industries are becoming more influential on the world stage. By some measures, China’s rising box office numbers have already surpassed those of the U.S., and India’s film business is the world’s largest by number of films produced. That’s