Movies

To kick off their continent-wide promotional tour ahead of the African release of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” director Ryan Coogler and stars Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Tenoch Huerta and Winston Duke touched down in Lagos, Nigeria on Nov. 6. The splashy premiere was just the latest sign that the hub of the West

A host of big-budget studio productions, including Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible 7” and Viola Davis’ historical epic “The Woman King,” has given a boost to South Africa’s locations industry, with Netflix’s live-action series “One Piece” — based on the iconic Japanese manga — boasting the country’s biggest production budget to date. But while both foreign and

Peru as a filming location can be viewed before and after the making of “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” where a good chunk of the seventh iteration in the Paramount Pictures franchise is set in the picturesque country. Directed by Steven Caple Jr. (“Creed II”), the upcoming “Transformers” is said to have injected an estimated $10

Pop quiz: What do the filmmakers who won this year’s top Sundance prize (Nikyatu Jusu, “Nanny”), Cannes’ Palme d’Or (Ruben Östlund, “The Triangle of Sadness”) and Oscar’s best picture trophy (Sian Heder, “CODA”) have in common? They’re all veterans of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch list — which also counts Taika Waititi, Chloé Zhao and

Harvey Weinstein’s defense called their first three witnesses on Monday morning, following nearly a month of the prosecution’s case in the disgraced producer’s Los Angeles sexual assault and rape trial. Weinstein’s attorneys have said they intend to call six witnesses in total, and expect to rest their case this week. All three witnesses took the

“Devotion,” says composer Chanda Dancy, “is about true eternal love. How do you translate love for family, love for your fellow man, love for your country, into music? That’s what the director and I wanted to create.” Dancy’s score for the J.D. Dillard film about an African-American pilot who became a Korean War hero is

“Strange World” director Don Hall was thinking about his children and the world they would inherit when he got the idea for Disney’s latest animated feature. Hall, whose credits include “Raya and the Last Dragon,” says he wanted to tell a story about the environment. “This idea of the world existing on a back of

James Gunn is the new co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios along with Peter Safran, and he confirmed during a Twitter Q&A with fans that the DC Universe under his watch will be connected across film, television, animation and video games. But that doesn’t mean Gunn and Safran are putting a ban on standalone projects that exist

Mark Burnett has formally resigned from his top leadership role at MGM, a move that comes 10 months after Amazon closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of the studio.  Burnett’s departure from the MGM fold is not a surprise. The producer, known for enduring unscripted hits including CBS’ “Survivor,” NBC’s “The Voice” and ABC’s “Shark Tank,” has

For Kendrick Lamar’s “We Cry Together” short film, it was crucial that the visuals captured the vulnerability and toxicity of a relationship in an intimate space. “It challenged me to actually live in what I was writing, and really be there and be present with Taylour [Paige],” Lamar said. “And I remember us going back

Legendary Entertainment, the production company behind “Dune” and “Godzilla vs. Kong,” has cut ties with Warner Bros. and entered a multi-year worldwide film distribution partnership with Sony Pictures. Under the new agreement, Sony will market and distribute Legendary’s upcoming theatrical motion picture titles. However, select existing projects at Legendary are exempt from the pact, meaning Warner

The 32nd annual Gotham Awards will take place Monday evening at an in-person event held at New York’s Cipriani Wall Street, the same venue where this year’s nominations were announced. The red carpet will commence at 7 p.m. ET, which will then be followed by the ceremony. The event is being live-streamed online right here

TFL Meeting, a TorinoFilmLab-organized initiative, has awarded 18 cash prizes, worth a total of €315,000 ($330,000), to support the development and production of feature-length projects. Of the 30 projects presented during the program’s 15th edition, 20 were part of the ScriptLab program, and 10 were showcased in the FeatureLab program. The participants presented them to

Andrew Brown has been promoted to president of Digital Distribution at Neon, the company announced Monday. Under Brown’s leadership, the studio launched its home entertainment division and formed Decal, a home entertainment distribution company. “Andrew’s knowledge of the players, the platforms and the history of cinema all converge to make him a one-of-a-kind executive,” said

Subject Matter, a recently-launched nonprofit organization that supports social issue documentary films and other nonprofits that work on its featured topics, announced their inaugural grantees, awarding a total of $120,000 to four feature-length documentaries and four of the films’ coinciding nonprofits. Subject Matter launched in July, spearheaded by former Tribeca Film Institute leaders Amy Hobby,

Will Smith’s press tour for “Emancipation” has begun, with the actor directly addressing moviegoers who are not yet ready to embrace his work following the Oscars slap earlier this year. “Emancipation,” a slavery drama directed by Antoine Fuqua, is Smith’s first major film release since the 2022 Oscars, where he took the stage and slapped

Jordan Peele and Riz Ahmed are set to executive produce Nuhash Humayun’s live-action short film “Moshari,” Variety can reveal. The Oscar winners have boarded Humayun’s exploration of climate change in Bangladesh, which has caused both personal and global tragedies. “The film follows two sisters forced together to survive in a strange new world while battling

As a film critic, I don’t watch much television. There simply isn’t time, what with all the new movies opening each week. As for the critics and columnists who cover television, I don’t know how they do it. How do these people — folks like Michael Ausiello, editor-in-chief of TVLine (owned by Variety parent company

Helena Bonham Carter railed against “cancel culture” in a recent interview with The Times UK, saying, “Do you ban a genius for their sexual practices? There would be millions of people who, if you looked closely enough at their personal life, you would disqualify them. You can’t ban people. I hate cancel culture. It has

Fathom Events and the Metropolitan Opera have renewed the “The Met: Live in HD” screening series, extending a cultural tradition that has delivered scores of performances from the Met’s stage at Lincoln Center directly to theater screens nationwide since 2006. The partnership between the country’s largest performing arts institution and leading event-cinema distributor will be

BUENOS AIRES —  Online in 2020, and sporting a boutique on-site edition in 2021, Ventana Sur, Latin America’s biggest film-TV market, is roaring back, attendance levels, especially from delegates outside Argentina, looking set to break all time records.    “With all the sales companies, distributors and platforms coming back, it’s really great to find the same

One of Brazil’s biggest film-TV stars, Marjorie Estiano – an International Emmy nominee for her performance in Globo’s “Under Pressure” and star of Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas’ Locarno winner “Good Manners” – is attached to take the lead in one of the most awaited Latin American genre films of 2023, Brazilian horror feature “A Mother’s Embrace.” 

Capping the celebration of Endemol Shine Brazil’s 15th anniversary, parent company Banijay Americas will be unveiling what they tout will be the largest independent production studio facility in Latin America. In a statement led by Ben Samek, president and chief operating officer, Banijay Americas, the nearly 750,000 square feet (more than 70,000 square meters) Banijay

Closing Japan with Medallion and French-speaking Canada with Axiom and fielding offers for the U.S., China and the U.K, “The Beasts” is on track to shortly sell well over half the major territories in the world for sales agent Latido Films. as  The sales come as Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s rural thriller heads to this week’s Ventana

France’s Xavier Lafitte  (“In the City of Sylvia,” “Yves Saint Laurent”) is slated to star in “Perhaps,” (“Tal vez,”), a project under development by first time director Arima León.  He’s the latest actor to become announced for a project exploring the mismatched love between poet and writer, Natalia Sosa Ayala (1938-2000) and legendary Trapeze Artist

Buenos Aires-based Compañía de Cine (“Lemebel”) has secured world sales rights for director M Sin Título’s absorbing queer documentary “The Way You See Me” (“Como Tú Me Ves”). A standout arthouse distribution outfit, the company will also step-in to co-produce the venture alongside auteur-focused peers Paula Zyngierman at Maravilla Cine (“Amando A Martha”) and Mexico’s

Period thriller “The Night Owl” lifted the South Korean box office even as “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” faded. The locally-made “Owl” earned $4.85 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). Over the five days from its Wednesday debut, the 15-rated, C-JeS Entertainment-produced

China’s box office plunged back to its lowest levels in six months as the twin curses that have haunted the China film industry throughout this year – COVID restrictions and a lack of new releases – came back to haunt the latest weekend. The top film, Japanese animation film, “Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween”

Machines can never replace human creativity and technology should be in mankind’s service were the biggest takeaways from a heavyweight panel looking to the future of content at the International Film Festival of India, Goa, on Sunday. The panel was devised and led by eminent filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (Red Sea Film Festival opener “What’s Love

Russia was a significant presence at India’s recently concluded Film Bazaar market in Goa, with Roskino and Moscow Export Center occupying two pavilions. There were 14 Russian production companies represented at the Moscow Export Center pavilion. Roskino, operating under the umbrella brand ‘Russian Content Worldwide,’ featured more than 30 films, series and animations from 10