Movies

“Batman Returns” screenwriter Daniel Waters participated in a recent discussion about the Tim Burton-directed sequel (via IndieWire) and revealed the collaborators’ clashing visions for a spinoff project centered on Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. Waters was envisioning a satirical take on the comic book movie genre, something he says was more akin to Prime Video’s “The Boys”

“Oppenheimer” may not be streaming on Peacock until the new year, but “Barbie” is ready to watch from home right this second courtesy of Max. And it’s far from the only great movie in 2023 to find itself available on streaming as the year comes to a close. From Netflix’s Oscar contenders to Hollywood tentpoles

The career of Scott Frank got a lengthy deep dive courtesy of a profile in The New Yorker that revealed the writer-director has a $300,000 weekly fee as a Hollywood script doctor. Frank acknowledges this fee is “insane,” but being a script doctor is how he’s made a life for himself despite being a credited

Lewis “Lew” Rothman, an entertainment executive who held top jobs at the Weinstein Company and Strategy PR, died suddenly at his home in East Hampton on Dec. 22. He was 63. Rothman is remembered for his smarts, honesty, humor, colorful language, movie star looks and an attitude and accent that betrayed his Queens roots. Beginning

The rare documentary that opens not just with a content warning, but with a request not to share identifying images of its child subject, To Kill a Tiger is a heavy but necessary work about the legalese and cultural attitudes surrounding sexual violence in rural India. The Oscar-shortlisted doc from New Delhi-born director Nisha Pahuja

This year’s Golden Globe nominees for best animated feature span four films from mainstay Hollywood studios and two critically acclaimed movies from lauded Japanese helmers. Though their settings and stories may be vastly different, spanning from an elemental metropolis or Japan to the multiverse, their throughline is innovative and inspiring animation. “Suzume,” helmed by Makoto

Paul Schrader wrote Martin Scorsese‘s “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” and it appears he would’ve handled things differently had he been the one to pen “Killers of the Flower Moon.” In a recent interview with France’s Le Monde, Schrader called “Flower Moon” a “good movie” but one that could’ve been better had DiCaprio been playing

Timothée Chalamet retained his holiday season crown as “Wonka” topped the box office on Thursday. The family film, which looks at chocolatier Willy Wonka and his quest to open the world’s most fantastical candy company, earned $8 million, pushing its domestic gross to $110.6 million. “Wonka” carries an $125 million budget and has been a

Here’s a brief history of documentary moviegoing. In the 1960s, the documentary as we know it was being invented, but hardly anyone saw them. In the ’70s and ’80s, a new generation of masters — Barbara Kopple, Ken Burns, Errol Morris, Claude Lanzmann — came to the fore, and mainstream audiences began to take notice.

The “Harry Potter” film franchise might have saved Gary Oldman’s career, but he’s not giving himself much praise for his performance as Sirius Black. Oldman debuted as the fan favorite character in 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” During a recent interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, the Oscar winner called his

Powered by “Barbenheimer,” 2023 box office in Spain surged 31% to €487.5 ($541.1 million), still 18.2% below a pre-pandemic average of €596 million ($661.6 million) over 2015-19. At 74.9 million tickets sold, admissions rose 26%, 24% down on pre-COVID cinemagoing, according to Comscore Movies Spain, which announced 2023 results through Dec. 29 on Friday.  “2023

Bollywood A-list actor Ayushmann Khurrana scored another major hit in 2023 with comedy sequel “Dream Girl 2.” But he is still happy to have achieved what he describes as “validation.” The film was one of several medium budget Hindi-language films that became box office successes, including “OMG 2,” “Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway,” “Zara Hatke Zara

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “The Color Purple,” now playing in theaters. As “The Color Purple” director Blitz Bazawule and his star-studded cast made their press rounds ahead of the musical movie’s Christmas Day release, they paid a special trip to visit “The View” and Whoopi Goldberg, who starred in the 1985 movie

It’s one thing to direct an episode of the sitcom on which you appeared for six seasons. “Schitt’s Creek” star Daniel Levy aced that exercise back in 2020, earning an Emmy for co-helming the series finale. But it’s an entirely different challenge to write and direct a smart, sensitive original feature in which you also

Jessica Chastain started 2023 by telling Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Live” that she was open to reading a script for the film adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” The Oscar-winning actor has long been fans’ top choice to play the title character, a reclusive old Hollywood

Sandra Hüller finds herself at the center of two of the most talked-about movies of the year: The German actor gets to show her range (and her facility with languages) in both Jonathan Glazer’s drama “The Zone of Interest” and Justine Triet’s legal thriller “Anatomy of a Fall.” Both premiered at the Cannes Film Festival

“Wonka,” a family-friendly look at how Willy Wonka broke into the confection game, topped the box office on Wednesday, adding $8 million to push the film past the $100 million mark domestically. The movie’s stateside gross stands at a delicious $102.5 million. “Wonka” is also performing well overseas — its global haul of more than

In 2023, the rules didn’t apply to many of the year’s biggest success stories. For the past two decades, superheroes and sequels have dominated at the box office. But in the last year, many of the movie business’ Tiffany franchises had all the appeal of an Old Navy clearance bin, with the likes of Indiana

You won’t have to battle your bladder to watch A24’s upcoming action epic “Civil War.” The Alex Garland movie, set in the near future as the United States breaks out into violent conflict, has a runtime of 109 minutes, despite reports to the contrary. While IMDb incorrectly lists a runtime of 3 hours and 15

Three decades after the 1915 Armenian Genocide, an optimistic American Armenian returns to his Sovietized homeland, only be thrown in prison under flimsy circumstances. From his squalid jail cell, he peers daily into the home and inner life of one of his Armenian prison guards, and inadvertently finds the cultural connection he’d been searching for.

Mbongeni Ngema, a distinguished South African musician and creator of the musical “Sarafina!,” died on Wednesday in a car accident. He was 68. “Ngema was killed in a head-on car accident while returning from a funeral he was attending in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape this evening,” his family said in a statement to the

Indian actor and politician Narayanan Vijayaraj Alagarswami, known popularly by his screen name Vijayakanth, died in Chennai on Thursday, following complications related to pneumonia. He was 71. Vijayakanth, who had been ailing for some time, was admitted to Chennai’s MIOT (Madras Institute of Orthopaedics and Traumatology) International Hospital in November. He recently tested positive for

Donald Trump criticized “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” director Chris Columbus on Wednesday for claiming in an interview that Trump bullied his way into the 1992 sequel. On Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, the former U.S. president said that Columbus and the production team were “begging me to make a cameo appearance

Hannah Waddingham appeared on the Christmas episode of ITV’s “James Martin’s Saturday Morning” (via The Independent) and revealed she’s ready to defend Tom Cruise against his critics after working with the Oscar nominee on the upcoming “Mission: Impossible 8.” It was announced in March that the “Ted Lasso” Emmy winner was joining Cruise and the

Glen Powell is currently showing off his leading man chops opposite Sydney Sweeney in Sony’s romantic-comedy “Anyone But You,” and he’ll keep getting the chance to do so in 2024 with Netflix’s “Hit Man” and Warner Bros.’ “Twisters.” The latter project attempts to turn the 1996 box office hit “Twister” into a new franchise —

Barack Obama has revealed his favorite movies of the year, an annual tradition from the former President of the United States. The first three films on the list — “Rustin,” “Leave the World Behind” and “American Symphony” — were produced by his company Higher Ground, which he founded alongside his wife Michelle. “I’m biased since

Get ready for a ton of sequels, threequels and prequels coming to the big screen in 2024, including some movies that were delayed due to the Hollywood strikes. Although the actors and writers strikes may have pushed back production and release dates for some films, moviegoers will still have plenty of in the coming year.

“The Color Purple” added $7.1 million on Tuesday, bringing its domestic box office tally to an impressive $25 million after two days of release. The Warner Bros. film, an adaptation of the book-turned-beloved-movie-turned-hit-Broadway-musical, opened in theaters on Monday. It nearly set a holiday record with $18 million, marking the largest Christmas Day opening for a

David Leland, the British writer, director and actor whose credits include “Wish You Were Here,” “The Borgias” and more, died on Dec. 24, according to his agents Casarotto Ramsay & Associates. He was 82. A cause of death was not revealed. Leland cut his teeth in theater, where he directed the world premiere of Michael

Where would the 2023 box office be without the bomb and the bombshell? “Barbenheimer” may have started as a meme, but the two seemingly different blockbusters with twin release dates became the moviegoing phenomenon of the year. All that social media chatter translated into ticket sales (and then some), with the Warner Bros. comedy “Barbie”