Movies

Triawan Munaf, chairman of the Indonesian Agency for Creative Economy (BEKRAF) was on hand on Monday for the opening of the Bali International Film Festival (Balinale). His presence was intended as a sign that Indonesia, Asia’s sleeping giant as a film player, is rousing itself. It was also an endorsement of the indie festival which,

September 25, 2018 7:55PM PT Merzak Allouache’s no-frills drama about a pair of young jihadists who bond before a potentially life-ending mission. Little is known about Nour and Amine, the two young jihadists assigned to sabotage a North African oil refinery in “Divine Wind,” a bare-bones drama from veteran Algerian director Merzak Allouache. The purpose

September 25, 2018 7:52PM 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 “Bad Times at the El Royale.” Ads placed for the thriller had an estimated media value of $5.16 million through Sunday

An energized crowd filled the street outside of the Regal Cinemas in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday night, awaiting the arrival of comedy’s newest dynamic duo, Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish. The carpet at L.A. Live was transformed with back to school vibes, including lockers, a trophy case and the essence of a high school

September 25, 2018 4:07PM PT Blumhouse and Universal Pictures are throwing another slasher birthday rager following the success of 2017’s “Happy Death Day.” The film’s original lead, Jessica Rothe, will return in the newly titled “Happy Death Day 2U” when it hits on the previously announced date of Valentine’s Day 2019. Christopher Landon is back

Andrew Dice Clay had some tough competition to play the father of Lady Gaga’s character in “A Star Is Born.” After all, he was up against legendary actors like Robert De Niro, John Turturro, and John Travolta for the part, he revealed to Variety on Monday night at the film’s Los Angeles premiere. “These are

September 25, 2018 12:44PM PT A solid, but faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s gothic fairytale about two peculiar, ostracized sisters hiding a dark family secret. If the recent failure of films such as “The Little Stranger” and “Marrowbone” has taught us anything, it’s that audiences don’t seem as thrilled with good, bone-chilling Gothic mysteries as

September 25, 2018 11:00AM PT Participant Media’s “On the Basis of Sex” is set to open the 32nd AFI Fest, the American Film Institute announced Tuesday. Directed by AFI alumna Mimi Leder, the film follows a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she negotiates one of her earliest cases, Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, before her time on the

Upbeat Hong Kong stories that bring audience laughter and optimism rather than highly stylized dramas about heavy subjects could be the antidote for an industry struggling with its identity in the post-handover era, according “Men on the Dragon” director Sunny Chan. The local drama has garnered more than HK$9.5 million ($1.2 million) since its Aug.

More Hollywood actors are expected to appear in starring roles in Chinese films as China’s film industry continue to expand, with bigger productions looking to meet international standards and feed the growing appetite for domestic blockbusters. So far, however, the top Hollywood stars joining the ensemble casts of these blockbusters have almost all been men. Opportunities

September 25, 2018 9:30AM PT The SAG-AFTRA Foundation will present its Patron of the Artists Awards to entertainment industry leader Jeffrey Katzenberg and director-producer-writer Spike Lee. The foundation made the announcement Tuesday. It said the awards honor industry leaders who are champions of the arts and whose history of fostering creativity and creating opportunities for

September 25, 2018 8:50AM PT Cameron Crowe’s iconic film “Almost Famous” is getting the stage treatment. On Tuesday, producers announced a musical is officially in the works. It will feature music by composer Tom Kitt, who previously scored “Next to Normal” and “Bring it On,” with lyrics by Kitt and Crowe. Crowe will pen the book

In Spain to receive the San Sebastian Intl. Film Festival’s highest award for an individual and to promote her latest feature, “Red Joan,” Judi Dench didn’t shy away Tuesday from bringing up a name that many now prefer to avoid. Asked at a packed press conference if there were any particularly memorable moments in her career

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will keynote Variety’s inaugural Music for Screens Summit, held at Neuehouse in Hollywood on Oct. 30. The day-long event, with ambient music exclusively provided by iHeartMedia, will focus on the latest trends in composing for film and television, music supervision, commercial synchs in the digital age, legacy act management, soundtracks’ enduring popularity, and

A few years ago, veteran indie film producer Gigi Pritzker had a stroke of “Genius.” Pritzker had been trying for years to get a movie biopic of Albert Einstein off the ground but the script and other elements never quite gelled. She eventually realized the problem was that Einstein’s remarkable life was too unwieldy for

September 25, 2018 7:00AM PT Well Go USA has bought North American theatrical rights to Bill Oliver’s science-fiction drama “Jonathan,” starring Ansel Elgort, Suki Waterhouse and Patricia Clarkson. The deal was announced Tuesday, prior the Sept. 26 West Coast premiere of “Jonathan” at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Well Go plans to release the film

Warner Bros. dropped the final trailer for “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” on Tuesday. The studio teamed up with Twitter to exclusively launch the spot on the social media platform before it went live elsewhere. When the trailer debuted, electronic billboards posted in New York City, Toronto, and Tokyo flooded with real-time Twitter reactions from

Matteo Garrone’s gritty revenge drama “Dogman,” which won the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival, is Italy’s candidate for the foreign-language Oscar. Dubbed an “urban Western,” the movie is inspired by a murder committed by a dog groomer during the late 1980s in a gang-ridden area outside Rome. The film marks Garrone’s return to

September 25, 2018 3:09AM PT Studiocanal Australia has signed a co-development deal with local producer Goalpost Pictures, for period film project “Vienna Boys Choir.” The film documents the quirky but real events that began in 1939 when the famous choir toured the U.S. and Pacific region, and became trapped in Australia for the duration of

Gyorgi Palfi’s “His Master’s Voice” will line up against Fruit Chan’s “Three Husbands” and Veit Helmer’s “The Bra” in the main competition section of the Tokyo International Film Festival. Ralph Fiennes’ “The White Crow” will also receive its Asian premiere in competition. The festival announced its full line up Tuesday in Tokyo. The festival will

A selection of Basque pictures, projects and productions in 2018: 70 BIG ONES Sayaka Producciones, Pokeepsie Films, La Panda Producciones and Setenta Invisibles L.P. AIE produce the next thriller from Basque genre specialist Koldo Serra (“The Backwoods”), starring Emma Suárez, Nathalie Poza and Hugo Silva. It features a desperate woman in need of $41,000, with

SAN SEBASTIAN — Based in Lyon, France Logical Pictures, proud of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s “Farming,” has come on board to co-produce Aritz Moreno’s much-awaited directorial debut “Advantages of Traveling by Train,” starring Luis Tosar and Pilar Castro. Sold internationally by Entertainment One’s Seville International, Filmax has picked up Spain’s distribution rights to “Advantages,” which is produced

SAN SEBASTIAN — Kicking off with a kinetic, slinking tracking-shot capturing the energy and Scorsese-ish voiceover of a young but caustic Ryszard Kapuściński during Angola’s 1975 Civil War, Basque animation movie “Another Day of Life” screens at San Sebastian in its best-of-the-fests Perlak section, rubbing shoulders with Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” and Damien Chazelle’s “First Man.”

SAN SEBASTIAN — Carlos Piñeiro’s “Sirena” (“Mermaid”) came into last month’s Sanfic Festival in Santiago Chile buzzing from the news that it had been selected, along with another Sanfic work in progress “The Prince,” to participate in the San Sebastian’s Films in Progress competition. “Sirena” is a black and white look at the conflict between

SAN SEBASTIAN  — Acquired by Paris-based Loco Films just before San Sebastian, Celia Rico’s first feature, the contemporary Andalusian village-set “JourneyTo a Mother’s Room,” traces the evolution of two women’s relationship, from mutually dependent mother and daughter to, after the daughter takes an au pair job in London, more healthily independent friendship. Here, mother and

SAN SEBASTIAN — Basque Audiovisual, it’s all there in the name. A comprehensive brand encompassing companies from across the audiovisual sector of the Basque Country, Basque Audiovisual represents the international interests of local productions from the northern Spanish community. As some of Europe’s growth is driven not by its biggest markets, but far smaller territories

Any biopic of a great artist in any discipline tends to wrestle with the same problem: that the artist’s life, eventful though it may be, is usually less immersively interesting than their very best art. In the case of Cuban ballet superstar Carlos Acosta, the promise of watching his rise — from an impoverished childhood

Focusing on film support funds in Europe and Latin America, a European Film Forum conference was held on Monday at San Sebastian. After a keynote from E.U.’s Creative Europe Media Program head, Lucía Recalde, the roundtable tok in two panels, moderated by producer Pablo Iraola (Florbela). Recalde emphasized a current state of flux: “Change is

Michael Ovitz still has nothing good to say about Michael Eisner. He and Ron Meyer started to patch things up over dinner a few years ago at Hamasaku, the sushi restaurant that Ovitz owns in West Los Angeles. And the famous threat Ovitz delivered to Joe Eszterhas about having “foot soldiers” marching up and down

You don’t say no when J.K. Rowling invites you to explore New York City. The Harry Potter author and the cast of “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” formed an armada of wizards, witches, and few lucky muggles as they traveled around the Big Apple raising awareness for the upcoming film. The event was ostensibly