In today’s film news roundup, a documentary about the 1963 Navy football team takes shape, “Never Heard” gets a release, Tim Tebow is backing “Run the Race,” “Death on the Nile” gets a 2020 release and Martin Scorsese is honored. DOCUMENTARY SET Michael Meredith, son of the late Dallas Cowboy quarterback Don Meredith, has signed
Movies
“Shoplifters,” the Japanese drama that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, leads the race for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. It is nominated for best film and in in two other categories. The four other films nominated for best feature film are: Lee Chang-dong’s “Burning” (Korea), Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “The Gentle Indifference of the
October 16, 2018 6:00PM PT Lena Waithe has very high hopes for her television series adaptation of the 1992 comedy “Boomerang” for BET. “I literally want this show to change the face of BET,” Waithe said at Variety’s Power of Women luncheon, adding that she expects the show to be “phenomenal.” “I’m not even saying
Even before he was promoted to SVP, executive director and head of ILM in May, Rob Bredow was a very busy man. He joined Industrial Light & Magic in 2014 as a visual effects supervisor, then quickly rose up the ranks, helping to launch ILMxLAB in 2015 to develop and release immersive entertainment, moving into
October 16, 2018 3:59PM PT Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz will be on hand for a Q&A hosted by American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre on Nov. 1. Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz of the Monkees will be on hand for a Q&A session at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on Nov. 1 when an
October 16, 2018 3:14PM PT SAG-AFTRA has selected Richard Masur as the recipient of its President’s Award. The honor will be presented on Oct. 20 during the SAG-AFTRA National Board plenary. Introduced at last year’s SAG-AFTRA convention, the President’s Award celebrates a member who has given meritorious service to the union and its membership. Masur
Idris Elba is in final negotiations to join the film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Cats.” Tom Hooper will direct the star-studded movie, also starring Ian McKellen, Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, and Taylor Swift. This marks Elba’s second feline role following his take on Shere Khan in 2016’s “The Jungle Book.” The Universal Pictures epic,
The October box office has been light on the tricks and heavy on the treats. “Halloween” should keep powering the domestic market as Universal’s R-rated slasher film eyes a massive opening in the $57 million to $65 million range. The studio is cautiously anticipating a $50 million bow, though some industry analysts think it could
There was perhaps no more fitting kickoff to 2018’s Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program than executive chair Jane Rosenthal‘s blunt greeting: “Hello to all you impolite, arrogant women!” Despite the elegant trappings of New York City’s Locanda Verde restaurant and a co-sponsorship with Chanel, the assembled group of women filmmakers, writers,
CAA has signed award-winning documentary filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West. The duo most recently directed and produced “RBG,” which explores the career and life of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She has developed a lengthy legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. “RGB” has grossed more than $14 million, making
October 16, 2018 1:16PM PT Netflix seems to have found its long-form goldmine: The streaming service disclosed as part of its Q3 earnings report Tuesday that more than 80 million of its subscribers from around the world watched one of its “Summer of Love” rom-coms over the past few months. The company also singled out
October 16, 2018 12:56PM PT Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga will reprise their roles as Ed and Lorraine Warren in New Line’s “The Conjuring” spinoff, the untitled third “Annabelle” movie. Wilson and Farmiga starred as the real-life paranormal investigators in 2013’s “The Conjuring,” which set the franchise in motion, and “The Conjuring 2.” The third
Citing the state’s production incentives, on-location filming in Los Angeles rose 3% in the third quarter, a FilmL.A. report released Tuesday showed. Feature film activity jumped 11.9% to 1,301 shooting days, gaining for the third consecutive quarter, and television production gained 1.8% to 4,095. CREDIT: Courtesy of LA Film Inc. Incentivized projects brought to Los
Proving that you can’t kill pure evil, Michael Myers returns once again to pierce fresh victims with an assortment of cutlery in Universal’s “Halloween” reboot. Though this latest entry in the franchise ignores the events of the last nine films, enough references are included throughout it to make several of the sequels well worth revisiting.
The American Film Market has announced that more than 70 companies from 28 countries will be attending AFM for the first time as buyers. The new companies include nine from China; four from both Italy and South Korea; three from countries that include Canada, Germany, Spain, Taiwan, and Vietnam; and two apiece from Hong Kong,
“Filmed on location on the Western Front, 1914 to 1918” claims the very final credit of “They Shall Not Grow Old,” buried in small print once a veritable army of magic-working technicians’ names has scrolled. It’s a cute throwaway detail that nonetheless defines what’s special about Peter Jackson’s path-breaking First World War documentary, composed as
October 16, 2018 10:30AM PT Saban Films has bought U.S. distribution rights to James Marsh’s crime drama “King of Thieves,” starring Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon, Ray Winstone, and Charlie Cox. Working Title Films’ Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner produced the pic alongside Michelle Wright and Ali Jafaar, with Studiocanal financing. “King
Long before Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria, there was Rita Hayworth. The dancer-actress, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, would have been 100 on Wednesday, and even fans of classic Hollywood may not realize how extraordinary her career was. She was the No. 1 box office star of Columbia Pictures in the 1940s, she was Fred Astaire’s
Back in the 1980s, before I became a Variety “mugg” (as journalists were once known in our parlance here), I was an ink-stained wretch, aka an indie screenwriter with a pirate picture getting peddled to the buyers in the Cannes market. And before he became an Oscar best picture-winning producer (for Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” in
The story of Ronnie Briggs, one of the U.K.’s most notorious and well-known criminals of the past century, will be making its way to TV screens thanks to “Odd Man Out,” an upcoming series produced by Brazil’s TeleImage. The series will tell the true story of the once-petty thief straight from the source, using his
Just a few days after Natalie Portman delivered a rousing speech about women’s rights at Variety’s Power of Women event, the rallying cry of #MeToo and Times Up continued to roar on Monday night at Elle’s Women of Hollywood gala at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, Calif. One could hear a pin drop when
Charlize Theron may have been in for a night of celebration at Elle’s Women in Hollywood event where she was an honoree, but that didn’t prevent her from speaking about serious subjects on the red carpet. After posing with Lady Gaga (“Yes, I’m a total fangirl. And also just because my kids love her so
Paris-based independant company Cineteve is on board to produce a flurry of ambitious series, including the political comedy “Parlement,” the border-crime thriller “Nine,” the French revolution western “Cagliostro” and the spy thriller “Gaston.” All four projects are being spearheaded by Cineteve’s founder Fabienne Servan-Schreiber, and Thomas Saignes who joined the company less than a year
October 15, 2018 8:31PM PT Lionsgate is in negotiations to back the untitled Fox News sexual harassment film starring Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman, sources have told Variety. Lionsgate had no comment Monday. Annapurna decided on Oct. 9 to back out of the project due to budgetary concerns. Focus Features was considering a move to
Though director Dianne Dreyer’s “Change in the Air” opens on a shocking, attention-grabbing scene of a desperate elderly man (played by M. Emmet Walsh) deliberately stepping in front of a moving vehicle, the rest of the film takes its sweet time to ramp up to faux profundity about humanity, spirituality, friendship, and forgiveness. The title
SAG-AFTRA is awarding Marsha Hunt, Norman Lloyd, June Lockhart, and Barbara Perry the Founders Award for their contributions to the union. The tribute, to be presented Oct. 21 during the SAG-AFTRA National Board plenary, honors early members of SAG-AFTRA’s predecessor unions, SAG, and AFTRA. Hunt is 100 years old, and Lloyd is 103. Lockhart is
October 15, 2018 5:46PM PT In this week’s edition of the Variety Movie Commercial Tracker, powered by the TV advertising attention analytics company iSpot.tv, Twentieth Century Fox claims the top spot in spending with “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Ads placed for the drama had an estimated media value of $6.19 million through Sunday for 847 national ad
October 15, 2018 4:07PM PT Comic book fans will have to wait a little bit longer to see the Flash race into theaters, and Albus Dumbledore may be partly to blame for the delay. Warner Bros. is pushing back the start of filming on the studio’s still untitled standalone Flash film, sources tell Variety. The
October 15, 2018 2:43PM PT Average U.S. movie ticket prices fell slightly during the third quarter to $8.83 — down a dime from the same quarter a year ago and 55 cents below their all-time high of $9.38 during the second quarter. The success of family-oriented films such as “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation,” “Christopher
October 15, 2018 1:45PM PT BTS is moving from the concert stage to the big screen in its first feature film, set to premiere Nov. 15. “Burn the Stage: The Movie” follows the Korean boy band during their 2017 “Live Trilogy Episode III The Wings” tour, which drew more than 550,000 fans across 40 concerts