Movies

Matt Kiel’s “Unicorn Boy” and Nina Ognjanović’s “Where the Road Leads” were among the winners at this year’s ninth annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival. The full winners list was announced Tuesday following the Closing Night Award Ceremony on Sunday. This year, the festival screened over 100 feature and short films and awarded over $45,000 worth

How high can “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” climb? The sequel to 2018’s Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” is getting a lift from good buzz and residual fondness for its predecessor, one of the inaugural cinematic forays into all things multiverse. And while reviews are still embargoed, critics flipped for the first one, so assuming the

Ezra Miller will continue being the Flash as long as director Andy Muschietti is involved in the Warner Bros. superhero franchise. During an interview on “The Discourse” podcast, Muschietti said he has no plans to recast Miller despite the actor’s history of legal troubles and alleged abuse. “If [a sequel] happens, yes,” Muschietti said about

Marlene Clark, an actor who appeared on “Sanford and Son,” the horror movie “Ganja & Hess” and several other films of the ’60s and ’70s, died on May 18. She was 85. Clark starred in several films ahead of landing her breakout role as Lamont Lawson’s (played by Demond Wilson) wife Janet in “Sanford and

Since she was a child, Ming-Na Wen has been a “Star Wars” fan. “To this day, whenever I get on a plane,” she says, “I still pray to God, Buddha and The Force.” And while might be cliché to open a profile of Wen by saying The Force is strong with her — when Lucasfilm’s

In her career to date, French director Katell Quillévéré has demonstrated an unusual talent for connecting to her characters so intensely that in some moments they seem less to be up on the screen in front of you, than sitting right next to you. Or even, as with the daydreams and interior musings that punctuated

During the Cannes Film Festival, 20 emerging producers from across Europe took part in European Film Promotion’s promotion and networking platform Producers on the Move. They had been selected by the 37 national film institutes that are members of EFP. Variety invited them to pitch their projects to our readers, which we present below. Gentian

Robert Englund starred in one of the most revered science fiction series of all time; he’s directed films; voiced video game characters; and acted in scores of movies and shows. But he’s aware that his legacy is playing horror icon Freddy Krueger in eight “Nightmare on Elm Street” films and a TV series. An upcoming

Arnold Schwarzenegger praised his “Expendables” co-star Bruce Willis as “a huge, huge star” and “a kind man” in a recent interview with CinemaBlend during the press tour for his Netflix action-comedy series “Fubar.” Schwarzenegger was asked to weigh in on Willis’ retirement from acting, which was announced last year as Willis’ family disclosed his aphasia

Family animated movie “Pirate Mo and the Legend of the Red Ruby” proved to be a smash hit with international distributors during the Cannes Film Market, with sales agency The Playmaker Munich delivering the film to multiple buyers. During the market, The Playmaker announced first presales to Benelux (Just4Kids), Turkey (Filmarti), Baltics (GPI), Greece (Rosebud)

LevelK has boarded “We Have Never Been Modern,” a Czech period drama inspired by the true story of intersex people in the 1930’s. The film has been selected at Karlovy Vary and will be released in Czech Republic by Bontonfilm. The movie, which marks the feature debut of Matěj Chlupáček (“Zrádci”), follows Helena, who is

David Thion, the French producer of Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning “Anatomy of a Fall,” is reteaming with Guillaume Senez for “Une part manquante,” a Tokyo-set drama which Be For Films is representing in international markets. “Une part manquante” will also reunite Senez with popular French actor Romain Duris, who starred in his 2018 film

International sales house Totem Films has closed distribution deals in multiple territories for “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” which had its world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. The company also closed a deal for France for another Directors’ Fortnight film, “A Song Sung Blue.” “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” was sold to France (Capricci), U.K. (New Wave), Benelux

VIEWERSHIP RECORD Indian streaming service JioCinema claimed a record for the number of concurrent viewers this week. It reported that 32 million viewers were simultaneously using its service to watch the IPL cricket final match between The Chennai Super Kings and the Gujarat Titans. The platform’s previous peak was 25 million. Chennai eventually won the

The New Zealand government said on Tuesday that the country’s generous screen production incentives systems are to be continued. The decision follows a New Zealand government review of the local and international production incentives and the post-production and visual effects schemes that began in late 2022. They also follow expansion announced earlier this month of

The Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, Eastern and Central Europe’s leading cinema event, has unveiled its lineup, which includes new works by Pascal Plante, Stephan Komandarev, Tinatin Kajrishvili and Babak Jalali in the Crystal Globes Competition. They will vie against films by up-and-comers Ernst De Geer, Itsaso Arana and Cyril Aris. The section has nine

“Perfect Days,” which world premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is reminiscent – in some ways – of “Groundhog Day,” but whereas in the latter film Bill Murray’s character, Phil, is trying to escape the repetitive nature of his existence, in Wim Wenders’ film the protagonist, Hirayama, is “embracing it,” the German director

With conflict currently erupting in Sudan, one could be forgiven for approaching Mohamed Kordofani’s “Goodbye Julia,” which takes place in Khartoum during the six years prior to the 2011 secession of South Sudan, as a worthy, topical history lesson. And it certainly does have merit as a primer for the class, ethnic and religious unrest

“Sebastian has two songs, but where’s Scuttle’s?” Marshall says the filmmakers realized when crafting the adaptation. DeLuca came up with the title, playing off the slang word for “gossip,” which Scuttle (Awkwafina) excels at – sort of. “She’s so befuddled and never gets the words together, so a fun thought was like let’s make it

The real-life story of Reality Winner’s arrest unfolds as such a sharp piece of on-the-nose political theater that it almost seems to have been dramatized. On June 3, 2017, the FBI showed up at the former Air Force member and NSA translator’s house to question her about a leaked document that they’d traced back to

Monty Python star John Cleese has expressed disdain for modern sensibilities and “PC culture” on several occasions in recent years. The comedian found a new battleground for those convictions by claiming that his plans to mount a stage adaptation of the 1979 comedy “Life of Brian” have been “misreported” by the Daily Mail (in a

Milt Larsen, the magician and TV writer who co-founded Hollywood’s famed Magic Castle night spot, died May 28 in Los Angeles. He was 92. Larsen had deep roots in the world of magic and in Los Angeles. His father, William Larsen Sr., was a prominent local defense attorney and a performing magician. His mother, Geraldine,

Family audiences turned out in force, propelling Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” to the top of the box office over the Memorial Day weekend. The film, a live-action remake of the 1988 animated favorite, earned a splashy $117.5 million over the four-day holiday. It ranks as the fifth largest Memorial Day debut — last year’s “Top

Lightning strikes twice. Having won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize in 2018 with “The Dead and the Others,” filmmaking duo Renée Nader Messora and João Salaviza scooped a Un Certain Regard Ensemble Prize on Friday night, including the collective crew and creative team, for “The Buriti Flower.” The couple, whom across the years have developed

After opening on April 28 in Japan, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has hit the JPY10 billion ($71 million) milestone in just 31 days – the quickest ever by a non-Japanese animation in the Japanese market.In the latest three-day period from May 28 to 28, the film earned JPY632 million ($4.5 million), bringing its cumulative

Top Argentina’s free-to-air channel Pakapaka has inked a deal with Paris-based animation house Dandelooo on award-winning series “Jasmine & Jambo,” to be broadcast on the Argentine government funded channel dedicated to children’s content.  Melissa Vega, international sales manager at Dandelooo told Variety, “Jasmine and Jambo is an amazing series that is doing great internationally. Pakapaka is the

Launching out of Cannes Premiere, Valerie Donzelli’s “Just the Two of Us” is a feverish psychological thriller about a woman brought deeper and deeper into a toxic relationship. And if Donzelli had always intended to make the project ever since reading the source novel back in 2014, the lockdowns of 2020 helped push certain elements

Martin Scorsese is on a post-Cannes tour of Italy where over the weekend the director, known for having a religious bent, met with Pope Francis and announced that he will make a film about Jesus. “I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing

The 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, June 9 to 18, has unveiled the titles in contention for awards in its four main feature-length sections: main competition, Asian New Talent, Animation film and documentary. These are eligible for the festival’s prestigious Golden Goblet Awards, winners of which will be announced at the Shanghai Grand Theater on the

“Fast X” predictably won a second weekend on top of the mainland China box office, driving its total past the $100 million mark. But the disappointing start for Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” was the bigger talking point. “Fast X” earned $17.6 million in China according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That was a