Movies

September 26, 2018 1:36PM PT The Independent Filmmaker Project announced Wednesday that Willem Dafoe and Paul Greengrass will receive an actor and director tribute respectively at the 2018 IFP Gotham Awards. As one of the first awards shows of the season, the IFP Gotham Awards provides early recognition for independent films and their writers, directors, producers and

September 26, 2018 12:55PM PT With “Venom,” which hits theaters next week, Sony is expanding its Spider-Man universe. The upcoming tentpole stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, a journalist who becomes the host of an alien symbiote and unwittingly adopts the terrifying alter-ego Venom. Venom has a long comic-book history with Spider-Man — in fact,

Luis Ortega’s Pedro Almodovar-backed ‘El Angel,’ which premiered at Cannes and screens at this week’s San Sebastian Film Festival, has been selected as Argentina’s submission for consideration for the Academy Award for best foreign language picture. Sold by Vicente Canales’ Film Factory, produced by Argentina’s K & S and and Pedro Almodovar’s El Deseo and

Mindy Kaling isn’t just hopeful that Hollywood is changing in the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up — the “Ocean’s 8” star says she’s already noticing a positive shift toward gender parity. “I’ve seen an enormous amount of change,” Kaling told Variety at the Palisades Village opening gala in Los Angeles, adding, “I’m noticing that

Academy Award-winner Damien Chazelle is coming to Morelia to kick off Mexico’s 16th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) on Oct. 20 with his latest film, “First Man.” For the first time, the festival will be presenting a medal for artistic excellence to Alfonso Cuaron, whose recent Venice Golden Lion-winner “Roma,” Mexico’s submission to the Oscars

Amazon Studios has acquired the rights to “The Female Persuasion,” an acclaimed best-seller by Meg Wolitzer. The movie will be produced by Lynda Obst (“Contact”), Oscar winner Nicole Kidman, and Per Saari (“Big Little Lies”). Blossom Films, Kidman’s production company, recently signed a first-look deal with Amazon — this film will be a part of

September 26, 2018 12:01PM PT Susan Johnson, noted indie filmmaker and director of the Netflix social media sensation “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” has signed with CAA and Management 360. Based on Jenny Han’s New York Times bestseller of the same name, “To All the Boys” was one of several romantic comedies to

September 26, 2018 10:00AM PT J.K. Simmons, Sienna Miller and Taylor Kitsch have joined Chadwick Boseman’s action-thriller “17 Bridges” for STXfilms. The mini-major announced in July that “Black Panther” star Boseman would produce and star in “17 Bridges.” Brian Kirk, whose credits include “Luther” and “Game of Thrones,” is directing from a script by Adam Mervis

When writer-director David Lowery (“A Ghost Story,” “Pete’s Dragon”) set out to make his new film “The Old Man & the Gun,” a true-crime story starring Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek, he quickly chose Fort Worth, Texas, as a primary location. Redford plays real-life professional criminal Forrest Tucker, who claimed to have successfully escaped from

Don’t come to “Alpha, The Right to Kill,” the latest rough-hewn slab of social realism from Filipino auteur Brillante Ma Mendoza, in search of revelations, either in form or content. A rumbling, street-pounding drug-war thriller, it’s far from the first film to paint cops and dealers on this beat as equally bent; a Mendoza joint

September 26, 2018 8:41AM PT AMC’s subscription service continues to add customers. The theater chain’s “Moviepass killer” now has 380,000 members, which the exhibitor claims outpaces its internal expectations. AMC has dubbed the program A-List. The servce lets users see up to three movies per week for $19.95 a month. A-List also lets members reserve

Noel Clarke and Jason Maza’s Unstoppable Film and Television is partnering with film funding platform Genera on a £250,000 ($329,000) fund for the worldwide production of shorts. Clarke (“Adulthood”) and Maza’s (“Welcome to the Punch”) work spans film and TV production as well as acting – the pair recently appeared Sky’s buddy cop drama “Bulletproof.”

September 26, 2018 7:00AM PT Smith Global Media has bought worldwide rights to the legal drama “Canal Street,” starring Bryshere Gray (“Empire”) and Mykelti Williamson. The film will open in North America on Jan. 18 over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. The film screened at the American Black Film Festival. “Canal Street” is directed,

You expect a movie starring Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish to have its share of highly combative verbal fireworks. And given that “Night School” was directed by Malcolm D. Lee, whose last picture, the deliriously raunchy and spirited “Girls Trip,” showcased Haddish as a one-woman comic hurricane (her character was a gale force of pithy

September 26, 2018 3:48AM PT Starline has taken international rights to “The Cellar,” the crime thriller from Russian filmmaker Igor Voloshin (“Bedouin”). The picture is a three-way co-production between Slovakia’s Furia Film, Russia’s Gate Film, and the Czech Republic’s 8Heads Production. It was largely filmed in the Slovak Republic where it will be released this

Paris-based private equity firm Alliance Entreprendre (NATIXIS Groupe) has taken a minority stake in About Premium Content (APC) to allow the company to fast-track its growth. APC’s current drama slate includes Movistar Studios’s Spanish-language drama “Gigantes” (pictured), Vox Pictures’s English-language hit series “Keeping Faith,” Dutch crime thriller “Fenix” and the returning Swedish crime thriller “Alex.”

Global Screen has closed further sales deals for its 3D animated feature film “Marnie’s World,” which is close to selling out worldwide. The movie is written and directed by Oscar winners Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein. In the film, pampered pussycat Marnie is lured into becoming a secret agent. Marnie teams up with a bunch of

September 26, 2018 1:04AM PT The Philippines has selected “Signal Rock” as its contender in the foreign-language section of the upcoming Academy Awards. The film is directed by Chito Rono and stars Christian Bables and Elora Espano. The family drama documents how the population of Biri Island in the 1990s had to climb a high

“Crazy Rich Asians” will open in Japan this week with distributor Warner Japan betting that the film’s muscular box office in the U.S. and elsewhere will carry over to Asia’s second-largest market. But the odds are against a huge win. In mid-September, Warner revealed that it would expand the number of theaters showing the film

Nothing spoils a family gathering quite like politics, and no movie has captured the way such debates can turn ugly quite like Ike Barinholtz’s “The Oath,” an impressively out-there feature debut in which no-win arguments over a divisive new government policy escalate into a full-blown hostage crisis, turning what should have been a mild-mannered Thanksgiving

SAN SEBASTIAN — San Sebastian’s Focus On initiative, now in its fourth year, invites industry professionals from a country, or countries, to expand their networking contacts and participate in industry activities. This year’s featured Focus On region is the Baltics, and the event is hosting representatives from Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. The Baltics boast strong

A borderline impossible game of Taboo could be played if one were tasked with describing Olivier Masset-Depasse’s “Mothers’ Instinct” without using the word “Hitchcockian.” The Belgian director’s luxuriant psychological thriller is so redolent of the Master of Suspense’s style, and so gorgeously robed in Thierry Delettre’s ’60s costuming that at times one expects star Veerle

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