Movies

Mexico’s El Relicario, whose “El rostro cubierto de besos” screened at Cannes Critics’ Week in its 2023 Morelia showcase, has boarded Ximena Valdivia’s Malaga Festival winner “4Eber,” a movie melding the modern teen dance scene in Cusco and ancient and contemporary fantasy and mythology.  Written by Valdivia and Costa Rica’s Luisa Mora Fernández, a co-scribe

Alfredo Castro, an absolute lead or co-star in seven Pablo Larraín films and one of the highest-regarded of actors in Latin America, is set to head the choral cast of “Three Dark Nights” (“Tres noches negras”), the third feature from Spanish-Chilean Theo Court. “Three Dark Nights” follows up Court’s “White on White,” also starring Castro,

RISING TIDE Production begins next month on “Black Tide Island,” a historical drama series that presents a Taiwanese insight into the Korean War. Production is headed by Hakka TV and Go Inside. Halla TV is the local Hakka-language linear satellite television channel operated by Taiwan Broadcasting System. The nine-episode scripted series is inspired by true

Yeo Siew Hua, the Singaporean director whose “A Land Imagined” won the Locarno Film Festival’s top prize in 2018, has cast acclaimed Taiwanese actors Lee Kang-Sheng (“What Time Is It There?”, “Days”) and Wu Chien-Ho (“A Sun”) in his new “Stranger Eyes.” The film, a thriller with domestic surveillance at its core, is currently shooting.

It would come as no surprise to learn that “Back on the Strip” started out as a “Magic Mike” parody. I’m not saying that it did. (The main character is named Merlin, not Mike, after all.) But what else could explain the bizarrely literal premise of an ensemble indie comedy in which our hero is

The Writers Guild of America met again with representatives of the major studios on Thursday, as negotiators continued to search for a path toward resolving the 108-day writers strike. The CEOs of the major studios — including Ted Sarandos of Netflix and David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery — are also expected to hold a

Olivér Rudolf’s “My Mother, the Monster” has won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink, its industry section that featured projects from Southeast Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The Hungarian feature film project, which is produced by Genovéva Petrovits at Kino Alfa, received a cash prize of €20,000 ($21,727). The

Sex, crime and fish tanks converge in the officially titled “Pet Shop Days,” Olmo Schnabel’s directorial debut which will play at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Variety has an exclusive first look at the project starring Jack Irv, Dario Yazbek Bernal and Willem Dafoe. Schnabel, son of Oscar nominated director Julian Schnabel, tells the story

Alexandra Altschuler and Don Wilcox have joined the Neon marketing team, making the move from their previous marketing roles at A24. Altschuler will serve as Neon’s VP of media while Wilcox serves as its VP of marketing. The marketing team expansion comes ahead of Neon’s release of anctipated films “Ferrari,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “La

Michael Cera plays the awkward, one-of-a-kind Allan in Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster “Barbie” movie. But if not for arranging a last-minute Zoom call with the director, Cera might not have made it into the film. “It was a kind of very last-minute casting,” Cera said in a video interview with GQ conducted before the actors strike.

The Writers Guild of America issued a report on Thursday calling Netflix, Amazon and Disney the “new gatekeepers” of the media business, and calling for antitrust regulators to prevent consolidation in the streaming marketplace. The report argues that Netflix, Amazon and Disney have amassed collective market power that has driven down wages and limited viewer

Sean McNamara’s horror thriller “Vindicta” has been picked up by Paramount’s Republic Pictures. The film rounds up Elena Kampouris, Sean Astin and Jeremy Piven for a story about a twisted serial killer. Astin previously starred in Season 2 of “Stranger Things” as fan-favorite Bob Newby, boyfriend of Joyce Byers. Piven is known for his role

Lenny Kravitz has written and recorded an original song “Road to Freedom” for George C. Wolfe’s upcoming film “Rustin.” Wolfe’s film stars Colman Domingo as the gay activist Bayard Rustin who helped co-organize the historic March on Washington. In a statement to Variety, Wolfe said, “I first met Lenny very early in both of our

Most people hit snooze when their alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m. Not “Blue Beetle” star Xolo Maridueña, who leaped out of bed each day so he could head to set and begin the hourlong process of donning his superhero suit. “This is not like getting ready for school in the morning,” Maridueña thought when

Ten documentary projects from eight countries have been selected as grantees of Project: Hatched, a Chicken & Egg Pictures program designed to support directors as they develop and launch strategic impact campaigns.  Many of the selected projects had prestigious premieres at film festivals, including Sundance and IDFA. But despite the high-profile debuts, the dismal docu marketplace

Michael Lewis, the author of “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” has responded to Michael Oher’s accusations against Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy. Oher, the NFL star at the center of “The Blind Side” film, alleged that the Tuohys cut him out of profits from the Oscar-winning movie adaptation and never actually adopted him,

The box office in mainland China reached an all-time high in the summer season, according to figures from ticketing agency Maoyan Entertainment. The record was achieved with minimal input from Hollywood. Maoyan, which defines China’s cinematic summer as running from the beginning of June to the end of August, says that the previous record of

New York Film Festival will serve as the world premiere of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s genre-defying series “The Curse,” led by Emma Stone; and Garth Davis’s science-fiction drama “Foe,” starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal. They will screen as part of Spotlight, which Film at Lincoln Center describes as a selection of “significant and surprising films, one-of-a-kind

The annual report from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that Universal’s “Bros” accounted for 80% of the transgender characters in the 100 top-grossing movies of 2022. According to the study, just 87 of 4,169 speaking or named characters (2.1%) in 2022 movies were LGBTQ+. Of that number, five characters identified as transgender and four of

The importance of laughter during times of loss is often undervalued. With her feature directorial debut, Janis Pugh showcases the significance of friendship and humor when grief strikes. A musical rom-com drama, “Chuck Chuck Baby” underscores the power of female companionship through the ups and downs of life. Premiering as part of the Edinburgh International

London-set dystopian drama “The Kitchen,” directed by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya, will close the 67th BFI London Film Festival. The film marks the feature directorial debut of Oscar-winning actor Kaluuya, who also co-wrote with Joe Murtagh (“Calm With Horses”). Tavares previously directed the Sundance-winning short “Robots of Brixton.” In “The Kitchen,” the gap between

Living legend Hayao Miyazaki’s animated fantasy epic “The Boy and the Heron,” the latest from Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli, will open the 71st San Sebastian Festival, screening on Sept. 22. Bowing San Sebastian, Miyazaki’s film, which he has declared to be his last, will score an extraordinary double of opening both the Toronto and San

TOKYO APPOINTMENT Noted Japanese director Ando Momoko (“Kakera: Pieces of Our Life,” “0.5mm”) has been named as the ambassador for this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival. She also features, alongside her father Okuda Eiji in the festival’s newly-released poster, which recreates a scene from Ozu Yasujiro’s “Tokyo Story” and in which Okuda and Ando represent

The Greek hotel where Sofia Exarchou’s jittery, melancholic “Animal” takes place doesn’t seem to be anyone’s first-choice holiday destination. The beach is gritty rather than golden. The skies are low and gray. The guests are older couples and noisy families — pragmatic souls seeking a couple of weeks of undemanding pleasure on a budget that

Pet owners spend an inordinate amount of time imagining, ascribing, even acting out the behaviors of their animals. “Strays” feels like the natural — if comically exaggerated — extension of that impulse, chronicling the personality of a border terrier named Reggie as he and three canine pals make an arduous trek back to Reggie’s owner,

It’s a clockwork ritual of awards season. A movie in contention, one based on a true story, will be dinged for presenting a version of reality that isn’t real enough. The critical chatter often starts on Twitter, but it can come from anywhere, ultimately spreading to the mainstream media (by the time there’s a New

Dozens of Hollywood players are staring anxiously at empty Louis Vuitton trunks this week, wondering if A-list stars and select filmmakers will get the greenlight from SAG-AFTRA to attend the rapidly approaching Venice Film Festival. The union’s interim agreements have been a focal point over the past weeks of the contentious strike, as the deals

The French drama “The Pot-au-Feu,” one of the breakout hits at the Cannes Film Festival and one of the movies that could represent France at the Academy Awards, has received a new title, Variety has learned exclusively. Now under its new title — “The Taste of Things” – the movie will also have a qualifying

Jamie Dornan said on a recent episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that he was fully aware film critics would ridicule the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movies before he accepted the role of the BDSM-loving businessman Christian Grey. Dornan starred opposite Dakota Johnson in the film trilogy, which grossed $1.3 billion worldwide but averaged

It’s been a quite a year for movies so far, and filmgoers are hoping that the fall and holiday season theatrical releases can live up to the one-two punch of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” in July. So far in 2023, horror has been strong with entries like “M3GAN” and “Talk to Me,” with fans looking forward