Movies

“Star Wars” producer Gary Kurtz died of cancer on Sunday, his family said in a statement. He was 78. In addition to helping bring the Skywalker stories to the big screen, Kurtz produced “American Graffiti” and “The Dark Crystal.” His career was closely aligned with that of George Lucas, but the two parted ways after the

Variety has hired entertainment journalist Matt Donnelly as a senior film writer. Donnelly, who most recently served as a senior reporter for The Wrap, will cover the major studios, the indie film market and the talent agencies. He will be based at Variety’s Los Angeles headquarters. Donnelly joins Variety’s sterling team of writers and editors

September 24, 2018 7:32AM PT Poland has selected Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War,” which won the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, as its entry in the contest for the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Amazon Studios holds U.S. rights to the pic. Pawlikowski’s last film, “Ida,” won the same Oscar in 2015.

September 24, 2018 7:02AM PT Cuba Gooding Jr. has lined up financing for his second directorial effort, Variety has learned. Taiwan’s Wudi Pictures will fully back the as-yet untitled film, marking its second collaborative project with the Oscar-winning actor. Maxx Tsai, Wudi’s CEO, will produce the picture and Gooding will star in the film. The

September 24, 2018 7:00AM PT Altered Innocence has picked up U.S. rights to Yann Gonzalez’s second feature film “Knife+Heart,” starring Vanessa Paradis. The drama debuted in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival and makes its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest this week. Paradis portrays a ’70s gay porn producer whose productions are stalked

September 24, 2018 6:26AM PT MUBI has taken the U.K. rights to David Robert Mitchell’s “Under the Silver Lake,” which played in Cannes this year. The streaming service will release the film theatrically. Starring Andrew Garfield and Riley Keough, “Under the Silver Lake” follows Sam (Garfield), a disenchanted 33-year-old who discovers a mysterious woman, Sarah

September 24, 2018 6:00AM PT Is Jon M. Chu directing the sequel and the possible third movie in the “Crazy Rich Asians” franchise? While he is reportedly on board, Chu tells Variety it’s not official yet. “I’m down to do the next two movies. We’ve been talking a lot about it, but we still have

September 24, 2018 2:03AM PT Hannes Baumgartner makes a coldly auspicious debut with this fact-based study of a champion athlete turned serial assaulter of women. In an era of reckoning that is rapidly running out of new ways to describe the evil men do, “toxic masculinity” has become all too familiar a buzz term. But

September 24, 2018 1:57AM PT “Operation Red Sea,” the most successful film of the year at the mainland Chinese box office, has been selected by Hong Kong as its contender in the foreign-language Oscars category. The selection was made by the Federation of Motion Film Producers of Hong and announced on Monday. A violent propaganda

SAN SEBASTIAN — Spain’s San Sebastian Festival signed a pledge on gender parity Sunday, following in the footsteps of other major festivals in Europe such as Cannes, Locarno, Sarajevo and Venice. San Sebastian Festival director José Luis Rebordinos made the commitment in the presence of Spanish deputy prime minister Carmen Calvo; the minister of culture

SAN SEBASTIAN — At a ceremony held on Saturday evening inside San Sebastian’s iconic Kursaal theater, American actor, director, producer and you-name-it Danny DeVito received the Donostia Award, given in recognition of his decades-long contributions to film, TV and the stage. Other recipients of the award this year are British actress Judy Dench and Japanese

SAN SEBASTIAN — Berlin-based M-appeal has secured additional sales deals for two titles, Toronto’s Netpac winner “The Third Wife”; Bafici’s best Argentine picture winner “The Daughters of Fire,” both screening at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Ash Mayfair’s debut feature, “The Third Wife” is the 19th century tale of May, a girl of just 14 years

When Hirokazu Kore-eda returned to the San Sebastian International Film Festival to accept his Donostia Award on September 23rd, it marked a fitting bit of symmetry for a story that began twenty years earlier. In 1998, Kore-eda arrived in San Sebastian a promising young upstart with his second feature, the bittersweet mortality drama “After Life,” playing in competition. A critical

In one scene in Natalia Meschaninova’s “Core of the World,” animal rights activists free some caged foxes from a hunting dog training farm in the forests of Russia. A few days later, two of the foxes reappear at the farm and climb back into their cages: They cannot fend for themselves in the wild. The

SAN SEBASTIAN — One of the biggest single public-sector funding systems in Europe, the European Union’s Creative Europe-Media Program, is up for renewal. On May 3o, the European Commission, the E.U.’s administrative arm, set out a proposal for renewed funding over 2021-27 of €1.85 billion. The Program’s head, Spain’s Lucía Recalde, used the San Sebastian

SAN SEBASTIAN — Gustavo Hernández and Ignacio Cucucovich’s Mother Superior, producer of Hernandez’s “La Casa Muda” and “You Shall Not Sleep,” has acquired Spanish-language remake rights to cult movie “Big Bad Wolves,” a film Quentin Tarantino described at Busan Festival in 2013 as best film of the year. The move is sure to make waves

SAN SEBASTIAN — As many people talk the talk, some companies are walking the walk – acquiring and selling women’s films as part of a growing business. In the latest move, announced Sunday at San Sebastian as the festival, the biggest in the Spanish-speaking world, signed a gender parity charter, Latido Films has acquired international

September 23, 2018 9:30PM PT Actor-director Jiang Wen concludes his decreasing-returns action trilogy with this good-looking but convoluted period romp. If the delicacy of the English title, “Hidden Man,” makes you think that Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen (last seen by Western audiences in “Rogue One”) might have come over uncharacteristically restrained for the final installment

For the most part, successful teen comedies follow a tried and true formula. Memorable high school movies typically feature characters who feel like outsiders floundering hilariously en route to the revelation that simply by being themselves, they’ll find what’s eluded them for so long. John Hughes knew it well, as did his imitators, realizing that

In case there are any young folks out there who aren’t convinced that the Nazis were bad — shockingly, there still seem to be stragglers — here stomps Julius Avery’s World War II thriller “Overlord,” a blast of righteous rage in which a group of good American boys avenge themselves against an SS goon squad

September 23, 2018 1:37PM PT Bruce Beresford’s feel-good dramedy about female department store workers in 1950s Sydney is a hit-and-miss affair. Women working at a fancy Sydney department store in 1959 are the subjects of “Ladies in Black,” an uneven dramedy directed and co-written by veteran Australian filmmaker Bruce Beresford (“Breaker Morant,” Driving Miss Daisy”).

Jeff Bridges is open to a “Big Lebowski” remake, but only under one condition — he has to be in it. Variety caught up with the actor Saturday night at the premiere of his latest film, “Bad Times at the El Royale,” where Bridges reflected on the 20th anniversary of the cult hit. The “Only

The films of Michael Moore have been faltering at the box office for several years now. This weekend, though, the lackluster performance of his latest truth-to-power opus, “Fahrenheit 11/9,” was notably dramatic, if not downright stark. The movie is a sequel, of sorts, to “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore’s scathing riff on the administration of George W.

Basque company Gariza Films is partnering with France’s La Fidèle to co-produce “Ane & Peio, A Paprika Love Story,” writer-director Lara Izagirre’s follow-up to “An Autumn Without Berlin.” Izagirre caught attention with “Berlin,” a Basque homecoming drama which earned a best new actress Goya award for Irene Escolar in 2016. One of the 17 movie

SAN SEBASTIAN — Chilean actress Paulina García, winner of a Berlin best actress Silver Bear for Sebastian Lelio’s 2013 ”Gloria,” which inspired his Toronto hit “Gloria Bell,” with Julianne Moore, is attached to star in the second feature of Pepa San Martín, “Happiness.” The project will be pitched at the 7th Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum

2018 has been a relatively low-key year for Channing Tatum, but he says he’s ready to get back to work. At the Saturday premiere of animated feature “,” his only film of the year, Tatum said he took the opportunity to slow down a bit this year. “I have a kid, man,” Tatum explained. “That

September 22, 2018 2:39PM PT The Gdynia Film Festival, Poland’s leading event for local movies, has signed the gender-parity pledge, following in the footsteps of Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Toronto. The pledge was signed Friday by Gdynia’s general director, Leszek Kopec, and writer/director Wojciech Marczewski, who is head of the festival’s programming board. The pledge

Even if it’s only a rumor for now, Zendaya says she’d be open to starring in a “Little Mermaid” live action film. At the premiere of “” Saturday, the “Spider-Man: Homecoming” actress confirmed to Variety‘s Marc Malkin that her involvement in a live action version of the hit 1989 Disney film is so far just a

“The House With a Clock in Its Walls” is on its way to a No. 1 debut at the box office with an estimated $24 million from 3,592 North American locations. The remaining top five slots should go to box office holdovers, with three other R-rated films opening in the $1 million to $3 million

SAN SEBASTIAN — Swiss filmmaker Hannes Baumgartner’s debut feature “Midnight Runner” headed into its San Sebastian’s New Directors world premiere on Saturday afternoon buzzing off a series of international press screenings held the week prior. The film’s protagonist, Jonas Widmer, seems to have it all together. He’s his country’s most impressive young distance runner and