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
Movies
The Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina-led sci-fi thriller “I.S.S” has been picked up by Bleecker Street. Helmed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the film follows a research trip on the International Space Station gone awry. “I.S.S” made its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in June, and also stars Pilou Asbæk, John Gallagher Jr., Costa Ronin and
RLJE announced today it has acquired North American rights to “Muzzle,” an action thriller starring Aaron Eckhart, from Highland Film Group. Directed by John Stalberg Jr. (“Crypto”) and based on a script by Carlyle Eubank (“The Signal”) from a story by Eubank and Stalberg Jr., the film is set to debut in theaters and will
Is comic-book movie culture reaching a tipping point…into peak exhaustion? This summer, we’ve seen signs of that in the ho-hum box-office returns for “The Flash” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” To be fair, the mega-success of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has testified to the genre’s continuing appeal.
Ryan Knapp woke up before sunrise one morning in July and left his home in northern New Hampshire at 5:30 a.m. to catch a movie. It wasn’t just any day at the cinema. In fact, it was a 14-hour round-trip journey that involved crossing two state lines by car, train and bus. That’s because Knapp
Paris-based outfit Urban Sales has locked several deals on “Pictures of Ghosts,” the latest film by celebrated Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Aquarius”, “Bacurau”) ahead of its North American premieres at Toronto and New York film festivals. The movie world premiered at Cannes in the Special Screenings section. Weaving archive documentary, mystery, film clips and
Black Bear’s management arm has signed Swedish director Måns Månsson for representation. Månsson most recently directed “Estonia,” an eight-part Scandinavian series about Europe’s deadliest civil maritime disaster, which has been selected to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival’s TIFF Primetime. His work has received much acclaim, as all of his previous films have been selected
A World War II drama that critics say glorifies Serbian nationalist groups has sparked outrage at the Sarajevo Film Festival, with organizers under fire for allowing excerpts of the forthcoming film to screen and the mayor of Sarajevo demanding resignations in the ensuing dust-up. On Wednesday, the Sarajevo fest fought back, insisting that it was
Will “Blue Beetle,” the latest DC superhero adaptation, knock down “Barbie” at the domestic box office? It may be a closer-than-expected race between the two Warner Bros. releases for the top spot, despite “Barbie” entering its fifth weekend in theaters. “Blue Beetle,” starring Xolo Maridueña as the alien symbiote, is targeting $25 million to $32
After Netflix released the first trailer for Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” a biographical romance about Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre, many viewers took issue with Cooper’s large prosthetic nose, deeming it the latest example of Hollywood’s stereotypical or inauthentic portrayal of Jewish people, known as “Jewface.” But in a statement posted to Bernstein’s Twitter
Argentina’s Tarea Fina, a producer on Cannes Camera d’Or winner “Las Acacias,” International Oscar entry “The Sleepwalkers” and Ventana Sur hit “Sublime,” has boarded “A Loose End,” the third feature as a director from Uruguay’s Daniel Hendler, a Berlin Silver Bear winner for Best Actor in Daniel Burman’s 2004 international breakout “The Lost Embrace.” Set
South Korean police said on Wednesday that they had found evidence that the box office performance of 323 films over the past five years had been inflated. Seoul Metropolitan Police said that, as a result, they had referred 69 people from major exhibition chains and 24 film distribution companies to prosecutors. The prosecutors will determine
Sovereign has acquired the U.K. and Ireland rights to Radu Jude’s latest feature, “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” which won the special jury prize at Locarno Film Festival. Written and directed by Jude, the comedy stars Ilinca Manolache, Ovidiu Pîrșan, Dorina Lazăr, László Miske, Katia Pascariu and Sofia Nicolaescu,
Abhishek Bachchan (“Dasvi”) and Saiyami Kher (“Faadu”) headline “Ghoomer,” a cricket and disability-themed film from R. Balki (“Chup”). The film follows Anina (Kher), a young batting prodigy who loses her right hand in an accident. An unsympathetic, failed, alcoholic cricketer Paddy (Bachchan) gives her new hope and trains her as a spin bowler with unconventional
The European Film Academy has fired the starting gun in the race for the European Film Awards. It has recommended 19 films to its members who will then select the nominees from this list, as well as some additional titles from the summer festivals, which will be announced next month. Among the selected films are
Though raised in Brooklyn, actor turned producer/director Danny A. Abeckaser was born in Israel. Unfortunately, that birthright isn’t enough to lend authenticity to “The Engineer,” which feels very much like an American B-movie stab at turning Israeli anti-terrorist operations of 30 years ago into formulaic action fodder — without much action, even. A miscast Emile
Documentary filmmakers were reminded of the importance of storytelling during a panel discussion about their craft as part of the Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry program Cinelink earlier this week. “It’s about telling the story. It doesn’t have to be a complex story. It could be anything, but it’s the way you tell it and it’s
Amid the ongoing Hollywood strikes, Warner Bros. and DC Studios launched “Blue Beetle” on Tuesday night in Los Angeles with a star-free “fan screening” in lieu of a splashy blue-carpet premiere. Despite the fact that the film’s actors — including Xolo Maridueña, Bruna Marquezine, George Lopez and Oscar winners Adriana Barraza and Susan Sarandon —
The Writers Guild of America responded Tuesday to the latest proposal from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, but any hopes for an easy resolution of the 106-day strike were quickly dispelled. The WGA did bend slightly on a few items, according to sources familiar with the talks. But the union negotiators did
Cillian Murphy’s decades-long collaboration with Christopher Nolan hit a new peak with “Oppenheimer,” his first leading role in a Nolan feature that has garnered him the best reviews of his career and Oscar buzz for best actor. “Oppenheimer” follows Murphy’s supporting turns in three Batman films, “Inception” and “Interstellar.” Recently asked by The Independent if
An attorney for Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy has issued a response to Michael Oher’s petition against them, which alleged that the couple deceived Oher into making the pair his conservators at age 18 and that he has not shared in the revenue from the feature “The Blind Side,” which drew from his life story.
TSG Entertainment, which has invested more than $3 billion in 140 Fox films including “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Shape of Water,” accused Disney in a lawsuit on Tuesday of using Hollywood accounting tricks to cheat it out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The slate financier alleged that Disney had engaged in
Prime Video has debuted the trailer for their upcoming drama “A Million Miles Away.” Based on a true story, Michael Peña stars as José Hernández, the first migrant farm worker to become an astronaut and go to space. The film will be released on Sept. 15 in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. The trailer depicts
Four years after tackling the Oscar-winning World War I drama “1917,” producer Jayne-Ann Tenggren is mounting the World War II epic “Enemy of My Enemy.” Powder Hound Pictures and the Polish Film Institute are teaming up to finance and co-produce the film, which centers on one of the world’s great unsung heroes, Captain Witold Pilecki. During the Holocaust, the Polish cavalry
“Barbie” co-casting directors Allison Jones and Lucy Bevan revealed to the MPA’s “The Credits” series that several wannabe Ken actors took off their shirts during the audition process thinking showing off their bodies was a total Ken move. Any actor auditioning for the role of Ken’s arch-rival Ken (a role that ultimately went to Simu
Millie Bobby Brown said in a recently published interview with Women’s Wear Daily that she is ready for “Stranger Things” to end with its upcoming fifth season. Production on the final run of episodes has been delayed because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Brown has been a fixture on “Stranger Things” as Eleven since
Alec Baldwin could once again face manslaughter charges, after a forensic report released Tuesday found that his Colt .45 revolver would only fire if the trigger was pulled. Baldwin was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter in the October 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. But the charge was dropped after the defense noted that the
“National Lampoon’s Vacation” star Anthony Michael Hall admitted at Fan Expo Chicago (via Entertainment Weekly) that he got caught trying to sneak onto the set of the 1983 comedy classic in order to see his co-star Beverly D’Angelo film a nude shower scene. Hall joined D’Angelo and fellow cast members Christie Brinkley, Randy Quaid and
Not even time-tested adventurers like Indiana Jones and Ethan Hunt are immune to the shifting sands of the movie business. Those action heroes, played by Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise, returned to theaters in Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” with the hope that
Darren Kent, an actor who appeared in “Game of Thrones,” “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” “EastEnders” and more, died on Friday. He was 36. His death was confirmed by his talent agency, Carey Dodd Associates, in a statement posted to Twitter on Tuesday. “It is with deep sadness we have to tell you that